


Two Cities

by nan00k



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: AU, F/F, Fix-It, M/M, background Agent Carolina/Vanessa Kimball
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-04-19 16:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nan00k/pseuds/nan00k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felix wakes up to a world turned upside down. He doesn’t know why Vanessa hates him. He doesn’t know why Tucker is saying he stabbed him. He doesn’t know anything about Control or a Chairman or why everyone keeps telling him that Locus, his sworn enemy, has abandoned him on a planet he nearly helped destroy.</p><p>Meanwhile, Hargrove is beyond scorched-earth anger and Locus seeks redemption through trying to stop him.</p><p>(Lolix, AU, fix-it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is essentially a fix-it fic for that downer ending we just got concerning Locus and Felix’s characterizations/fates in episode 19. This was actually supposed to be a slightly different AU, but interestingly enough, the canon events just made things a little easier here for me. Silver-linings!
> 
> After watching season 13’s finale, just know this story is AU after episode 19, but still follows mostly the same turn of events. Namely, Hargrove being a jerk.
> 
> Also posted on tumblr under badger-witch.
> 
> \---  
>  **disclaimer** : red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
>  **warnings** : major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, future AI drama, weapons of mass destruction  
> \---

Everything hurt.

He had once survived a shuttle crash, right after he had been discharged from the army and he had started taking up mercenary gigs. It had been bad and he had been thrown from the ship. He had been so injured, he had to cancel the contract. It was a less than glamorous entrance into the mercenary field.

This pain had nothing on that incident’s level of agony, but when he opened his eyes with a gasp in his throat, he really thought he had been chucked out of a Pelican again.

All he saw at first was the dark outline of a building to his right and fog everywhere else. It was dead quiet.

The only thing he was concerned about--outside of can I move my legs?--was where he was. He had no memory of falling from any heights.

Moving elicited pain all up and down his back. Grunting, he pushed himself up to his knees, mostly just out of a burning need to figure out where the hell he was.

The image came up quickly before him: cliffs and alien metal. He was at a tower. Blinking, he gazed backwards and up at the mammoth structure behind him. He was on the a lower level of what looked like the Communications tower, south of Armonia. There was smoke rising from what looked like a crashed pelican around the bend of one of the tower masts.

He must have fallen from one of the higher levels. Slowly, he got to his feet and realized he was battered enough for it. His neck and back hurt, and there was a sharp pain building in his left ribs. His right thigh was also aching, probably from lying on whatever injury it had sustained.

None of that made sense. He had no reason to be there and he certainly didn’t remember how he had fallen from the tower.

Raising his hand to his helmet, he activated his radio and reached out to all New Republic frequencies. He then started to move at the same time, aiming to find a ramp to the next level of the compound.

“This is Felix. Come in New Republic,” he said, keeping most of the pain out of his voice. “This is Felix. Come on, Bitters. Answer me.”

Felix knew the sullen lieutenant was on duty, because according to his internal clock, it was just after third shift. He had thrown Bitters on that shift after he and Palomo had gotten into another fight in the mess hall. Tucker had tried to blow it off as a simple scuffle, but Felix was sick of the infighting. They were honestly all like children.

Bitters didn’t answer him. Felix exhaled sharply and kept moving around the curve of the tower base.

“This is Felix, come in New Republic, come in,” he said. He winced as pain lanced up his left side as he limped.

Maybe he had fallen from the tower. He didn’t understand how he had even gotten there, though. He had been doing a solo scouting sweep near the area, but this was Fed territory. He couldn’t have just wound up there and not remember those kind of details.

There weren’t any signs of the Feds either, which was disturbing. It was foggy and his HUD was fritzing out a lot. It was all a bad situation.

In the back of his mind, Felix knew he had to get out of there quickly. If the Feds had retreated, that meant they were likely watching and waiting. Likely for their own mercenary to move in for first-dibs kill.

Shuddering, Felix forced himself to grab hold of the second landing as he approached it. He stumbled on the incline, but managed to haul himself up high enough to get his knee over the ledge. He fell rather gracelessly onto the metal landing. He was wheezing and painfully aware of how exposed he was.

“For fuck’s sake, would someone answer?!” he hissed into the radio. “New Republic, come in!”

He could see through the fog the other side of the tower, where the entrance and only real exit was. This was totally a trap, he thought.

Then, to his absolute relief, his radio clicked.

“ _What is your location?_ ”

The person who spoke sounded unfamiliar. Felix was in too much pain and too anxious to ask who it was.

“Shit, I don’t know,” he said. He stumbled over to the other side, where a large archway gave him a little more cover. “I think...the communications tower? I don’t see any Feds. I don’t know if this channel’s been compromised. Come expecting trouble.”

There was another pause.

“ _You, uh, want us to go there?_ ” a voice asked. It was different than the first one. It was definitely Palomo.

Felix grimaced as he slid down the arch and fell into a sitting position. “I’m injured and I don’t think there’s a vehicle nearby. I saw a crashed pelican on the lower level, but it’s too damaged to fly. A pick up would be just _dandy_.”

He wasn’t in the mood to babysit their emotions right now. He was struggling to figure out how he got to the tower. He didn’t remember anything and that was starting to really frazzle his nerves.

“ _Suuuure_ ,” the voice said, stretching out with both incredulism and nervousness.

Felix grit his teeth. “Who is this? Palomo?”

“ _Uh, maaaaaybe?_ ”

“Just tell Vanessa I’ll need to talk to her, got it?” Felix snapped. “Some weird shit is going on. Palomo?”

The radio had fallen silent. Felix stared at the wall across from him.

“Just perfect,” he said, letting his helmet thunk back against the wall.

He didn’t know how long he sat there. His HUD was still crashing, so he didn’t trust the time-stamp. His side was now burning with pain.

Then, he heard it. Turning, he saw a pelican slowly touching down on the far end of the alien ramp. Felix’s HUD picked it up as a New Republic shuttle.

“Thank fuck,” he muttered. He slowly, painfully rose to his feet, and raised his voice. “Hey! Over here.”

The two men immediately spotted him. They hesitated, but made their way over slowly. Felix limped toward them. One of them he immediately recognized as Andersmith.

“I either have some crazy hangover, or I got the shit kicked out of me and they weren’t courteous to finish the job,” he said, smiling through his grit teeth, even though they couldn’t see it. “And I-- _whoa_! Fed, right behind you!”

There were a few things he noticed right away. The first was that there was a Federal Army soldier right behind Lieutenant Andersmith. The second was that both had guns up and raised--and not at each other. Felix stopped dead on the path, mind racing. He didn’t even have a pistol.

If he could get closer and get Andersmith out of the way, he might have been able to disarm the other soldier. The man looked like a Fed grunt, so he likely wasn’t that dangerous.

Andersmith hadn’t even flinched, however. Felix stared at the not-panicking lieutenant. Neither gun had moved away from being pointed right at _him_.

“What are you doing?” Felix asked. “Andersmith, there’s a Fed right behind you. With a fucking gun.”

“I know,” Andersmith said. He sounded grave. He kept his gun raised, right at Felix.

Felix stared at the lieutenant, now increasingly alarmed. “What do you mean, you know--?”

Someone moved beside him and he turned, expected to see a flash of Fed steel or worse, green stripes. It wasn’t a Fed and they moved too quickly with the butt of their rifle aimed right at Felix’s head.

Oddly enough the thing that caught his eye the most before he was knocked out was the fact the guy who hit him looked shockingly like the late Agent Washington.

 _That’s impossible_ , Felix thought, before he hit the ground.

Washington was dead.

**0000**

**Crash Site Bravo**

If there was one thing their war had taken from them that mattered most in a civilized society, it was the ability to have due process of law and order. Total war made tribunals a far off goal. There were hardly opportunities to take hostages, something Vanessa sometimes wondered now was a deliberate design of Control and the mercenaries.

She had always lamented that loss of a being able to put their enemies on trial, instead of having to immediately defend herself and her people with force. She missed justice.

Except now.

Now, she was ready to take her gun and kill the prisoner set before her.

She had never been more ready.

“Kimball, you need to take a deep breath before going in there,” Washington said. He had been anxiously hovering the whole time since returning to Bravo. “Cool heads, for everyone.”

Kimball was just staring inside their makeshift prison cell. They had been forced to convert a decent section of the crashed ship’s science labs into holding cells, since they were some of the only rooms with properly enforced observation walls.

Cuffed to the table, Felix had woken nearly thirty minutes ago and had stopped angrily demanding answers for his incarceration only twenty minutes later. He looked terrible, honestly, from what little Kimball could see of him. She could see his left side was injured; the armor was caved in and slightly blackened like from an explosive. The man she had come to know--first as a friendly supporter, then as a backstabbing snake--wasn’t there in front of her. It was a wounded man who seemed more like a cornered dog than anything more nefarious.

She still had to keep herself from going for her gun. The second they reported they had heard Felix on the radio, she had wanted to go find him herself. He had somehow survived, despite Tucker’s assurances he was most definitely dead.

“We saw him die,” Tucker said, over and over. He was leaning against the far wall, his head in his hands. “I swear to God, Kimball, we saw the sword. Locus grabbed it and it worked.”

“And it can only be passed to another person after the death of the other,” Dr. Grey said, solemnly. She had been inside to see if Felix was dying from his injuries. He wasn’t, which Kimball found both fortunate and unfortunate.

That sword--the one Doyle had been hunted and died for--was out there in Locus’ hands. Kimball had hated not having both mercenaries sitting there. One was enough for now, however.

“Why didn’t we collect the body?” Kimball asked, still focused on the cell door.

“There wasn’t one, at least not one we could easily haul up!” Tucker said. He was frustrated and it was coming out as anger. “I mean, the sword was the main proof. I know how that shit works. He was _dead_. There’s no way Locus could have activated it if Felix were alive!”

“Could it be possible he was...resuscitated?” Wash asked, hesitant. “Does that work?”

“For that length of time that he would have been dead, I doubt it,” Grey said. She then turned to face Kimball. The perky woman was still quite serious. “General Kimball, I need to speak with you.”

“Then speak,” Kimball said. She didn’t mean to be brusque with any of them. She just… didn’t have a lot of control right now.

And then, Grey spoke: “I don’t think that’s Felix.”

The hallway fell silent. Outside, the barrage from rogue mercenary pelicans had halted for the day. They were expecting more night strikes later, but until they could get all of the injured and few civilians back to the old New Republic base safely, they were stuck there in the canyon. Hargrove’s ship was fast and it brutally outclassed their weaponry, even after their few AA guns pushed the ship back after that first initial assault.

 _Can’t fight a MAC cannon with a sniper rifle_ , Carolina had said wryly, before rushing off to help with stray mercs. Kimball believed her.

After Grey spoke, everyone in the narrow hallway had turned to look at her. Wash and Tucker were confused. Kimball just stared at Grey, expecting some follow-up, but Grey just stared back at her patiently.

“Excuse me?” Kimball finally managed to ask.

Grey didn’t get intimidated often, but she did seem a bit hesitant when she continued.

“Well, it’s a little complicated and I’m not entirely sure of what to make of it myself,” she said. “But if we’re concerned that we missed confirming Felix’s death, I think we can sidestep that for now. I’m more concerned about his face.”

“What _about_ his face?” Kimball asked, a bit too heated.

Grey ignored her. She turned to Tucker instead. “Tucker, when he fell, did you see the impact?”

“No,” Tucker said, his brow furrowed with confusion.

“And when he made the call, did he sound like he was calling an enemy base?” Grey asked, turning back to Wash.

“No, Palomo and the guy he was on duty with said he was just annoyed. They said he just gave them his location. When I arrived, he just walked up to them,” Wash said, frowning. “I thought he was just going to try to overpower Andersmith and Collins.”

“I see,” Grey said, nodding slowly.

Kimball took a steadying breath. “What are you trying to say, doctor?”

“Well, maybe you should just, ah, see it yourself,” Grey said. She cleared her throat delicately. “But I warn you, you may want to approach this--”

Kimball pushed by her without listening. She had been standing there long enough. she wanted to see Felix’s expression when he finally saw her. If he thought he could sweet talk his way out of a firing squad, Kimball would have to inform him otherwise.

Inside the room, Felix jumped at the door being thrown wide. He moved back as far as he could from the table before he realized it was her. He had the audacity to look relieved.

“Jesus Christ, finally,” he swore, scrambling to sit up as much as he could. He was angry, but she could also see fear. He reminded her of the man she met years ago at a debriefing, hours before she became general of the New Republic army. “Vanessa, where the hell were you? What the fuck is this about?!”

Kimball stopped, eyes on his and then his face, and didn’t reply.

Somehow, the angry words that had bubbled up seconds ago had vanished.

Beside her, Gray grimaced. "As I was saying, _carefully_."

Kimball was too busy to say anything. She was staring at Felix, cuffed to the table and no longer a direct threat, who in turn was gaping at her.

"What the fuck, Vanessa?" Felix asked again, his eyes wide with confusion and fear so real, she almost fell for it again, like she had fallen for his behavior for years and years during the course of the war.

She was stuck staring at his face.

She was stuck staring the scar on his face.

In the full light and facing him directly, she saw the faded scar that went from his left temple down his cheek. It was jagged, like it had come from a grenade he hadn't gotten away from in time. She was no doctor, but she knew enough that the markings had to be years old.

"What's wrong?" Wash demanded behind her. He edged into the room, his eyes falling onto Felix. He hesitated, because he noticed it, too. "What the...?"

" _Vanessa_ ," Felix said again, demanding, desperate, confused, and she almost fell for it again, because...

Kimball’s mouth opened but no noise came forth.

Because Felix didn't have a scar on his face.

**0000**

Kimball left, slamming past Washington and Grey, who both startled at her abrupt departure. She could hear herself breathing harder than necessary.

_What the hell was that?_

Wash was right on her heels, bewildered.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded, echoing her own thoughts. He shut and locked the cell door.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Grey said, frustratingly sounding like she was enjoying this. “But it’s extremely curious.”

Tucker had been waiting outside. He stepped back as Kimball stomped by him.

“What’s wrong?” Tucker asked, alarmed. “What did he do?”

Kimball ignored him. She turned around, stopped so suddenly both Wash and Grey had to jump back to avoid colliding with her. She rounded on Grey.

“Why does he look like that?” Kimball asked. She could hear herself and the near-panic in her voice. She tried to control it. “Felix—he doesn’t—he didn’t have a scar on his face.”

She had seen it enough times, during down times around the base. Felix had never been shy about taking his helmet off, unlike his partner, according to Doyle. Vanessa had pictured his face the moment she had learned of his betrayal and had struggled to place his painful words to the toothy grin he’d send her after a victory on the field.

That scar was something she would have seen right away. It was nearly the entire side of his face. There was no way anyone could have missed it before.

“So, what?” Tucker asked, frowning. “He could have done it to fool us!”

Kimball exhaled sharply and rubbed at her eyes. She was starting to get a headache. She saw a flash of blue light and saw that the AI, Epsilon, was still with Tucker. Beyond Tucker was Caboose. She had thought all the simulation soldiers outside of Tucker had gone up to help man the watchtowers. He never stayed away from his friends for long, she mused.

“Well, no,” Grey said, getting her attention again. “That scar tissue is well into the maturation stage of healing. Skin takes quite a bit of time to get to that stage. Years, even.”

“Maybe it’s a graft,” Wash said, crossing his arms against his chest.

“Still too old.” Grey stared at the observation window, tapping a finger against her cheek. “Interesting.”

“Was he wearing make-up?” Caboose asked, amazingly following the conversation.

Epsilon flashed twice, once in exasperation and then in almost resigned agreement. “Caboose—you know, what? I would not be surprised.”

Vanessa remembered the times during training or after a hard day, after heavy losses, when she’d see Felix sweaty and drenched from the showers. She remembered how he’d shove his face directly under the shower head, letting the portioned water blast him straight in the face.

“No,” she said. “He couldn’t have. Not without some slip up over time.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Tucker said, interrupting her. He was suddenly angry. “This is all because he has a scar? Who cares! We blew him up off the cliff! You definitely could get scars from that.”

Grey frowned. “That mark couldn’t have come from a two day-old injury, Tucker.”

“Then what about the ship crashing on top of him?”

“Stiiiill not an explanation.”

Tucker threw his hands up in frustration. “Oh, come on! What are you supposed to do then, believe that he doesn’t remember being a murderous piece of shit? This is clearly an act. He lost his mission and his partner. He’s just trying to get out of this.”

“I know that,” Kimball said, lowly. She looked back at the window.

It didn’t matter if he had a scar. He was still Felix. People didn’t just forget they helped commit a genocide. Kimball didn’t think he was stupid enough to try this whole mercenary-with-a-heart-of-gold routine again, but maybe the fall had knocked a few screws loose. That wasn’t her concern.

He was going to _pay_ for what he had done.

“Let’s just not jump to conclusions on anything yet, alright?” Grey said, clapping her hands together. She looked over at Kimball. “I’ll be running more tests. Scans and such, mainly to see if that scar is in fact real, but some blood work to cross-compare to the records you must have kept from when he first enlisted.”

Kimball’s scowl darkened. “First off, he didn’t enlist. We hired him. Second, any surviving records would be back at our camp.”

“Can’t we just have someone over there send them over?” Wash asked.

“Communication lines have been up and down all day. Anything more complex than radio won’t go through,” Epsilon said immediately. He seemed to bristle. “I really hate that man.”

He wasn’t talking about Felix. Kimball understood and could relate.

“We’ll get through this,” Wash said, glancing around their group. “Carolina said she wasn’t seeing nearly as many mercs. They’re all running.”

“That doesn’t concern me,” Kimball said.

“What does?” Epsilon asked.

She didn’t reply. Kimball’s eyes went to the ceiling, straight through it, to the sky.

Somewhere, up there, was the thing that concerned her most.

_Hargrove._

**0000**

**_Tartarus_ Crash Site**

It was two days after the Communications tower blasted out the SOS to the galaxy. They had likely summoned every sentient being nearby and it was inevitable they’d be visited by those nearby beings soon.

He was running out of time nonetheless.

Locus knew of every plan Control had issued concerning backup strategies. That didn’t mean Hargrove didn’t have plans he wouldn’t have told Locus or Felix. Locus knew that there were plans in place for just this sort of scenario. He doubted Hargrove expected Locus to betray him quite like this, however. He also doubted the former Chairman had expected a betrayal and then a blow of this magnitude to happen all at once.

Hargrove’s bid for Chorus was gone. His credibility was gone. He was finished.

And that’s what made him so dangerous, Locus realized.

He hadn’t stopped after fleeing the Communications tower. He couldn’t. He had to beat Hargrove to the few ultimatums Locus had been aware of and now inherently feared.

He got back to the _Tartarus_ crash site and the journey had been excruciatingly slow. He was still nursing a twisted knee and at least two broken ribs he had already set with bio-foam during the flight from the crash, after Felix had dug him out.

Standing on the rubble, Locus thought back to that moment. He had been knocked unconscious from the blast. The next memory he had was Felix shoving rocks off of him, cursing at him to _get up_ and _help him_.

Felix had been driven blind by a need for revenge. He had dropped the facade of a mission. He was unhinged and got cornered.

He got what he deserved, Locus thought. He believed it.

What the alien artifact had told him had been the last punch to the brain he needed to step away. He couldn’t step away from Chorus or what he had done there, but he could finally step away from Felix. His partner had made everything worse that was already wrong within him. He had let Locus’ injuries fester and swell and Locus hadn’t even realized it.

Sidestepping dangerously crumbling ledges and unsteady debris, Locus hunted down any sign of the storage lockers the _Tartarus_ had been carrying. The crash had obviously missed setting the dangerous material off, since Locus and Felix had been able to walk away just fine, but if they weren’t there in the rubble, Hargrove had more of them somewhere else.

He couldn’t just erase what he had done, but Locus realized that didn’t matter. The only thing he could do was prevent anything worse from happening.

Nuclear holocaust did seem like a worse option.

His knee was aching so badly that he had to stop. He leaned against a solid boulder and stared at the leveled alien temple that was now a smoldering wreck still. It felt like their battle there happened a hundred years ago instead of just a few days.

He thought about calling Washington over the radio. He could have warned them. But reaching out to them now wasn’t just going to put Locus in danger of capture.

Hargrove had immediately set aside all elements of secrecy and security after being revealed; he targeted communications relays all over the planet that were used for short-ranged communications. Destroying the one nearest to the Crash Site Bravo had rendered the more secure lines Kimball’s forces had been using worthless. Their unprotected civilian channels hadn’t been used since the civil war began most likely, but those lines were all they had at the moment.

Locus imagined the Freelancer AI attempting to fix this. He had his work cut out for him.

It made it easy to just turn on the radio and access incoming conversations. Most of the army had been wise enough to fall quiet unless absolutely necessary, but Locus remembered some of the older channels he thought they might use more independently. He was right.

There was movement on the bands, from Kimball’s soldiers, concerning the Communications tower. For a full second, he let himself wonder if they had found Felix’s body and if he should have cared what they would do with it.

They had found Felix, apparently, but what he heard made him stop.

“ _They’re bringing him in,_ ” a solider said.

“ _Who?_ ” another asked.

“ _Agent Washington just dragged him in wearing cuffs. They said he was injured. I can’t believe they actually called in the doctor to look at him. What a waste._ ”

“ _Fuck that, they should have thrown him off the tower again to finish it!_ ”

“ _Kimball’s gonna tear him apart._ ”

“ _I hope she does. Felix deserves worse than that!_ ”

Locus just stood there, listening.

“ _Can you believe he called out to the base?_ ” the one soldier asked. He sounded gleeful. “ _What a moron!_ ”

 _“I bet there’s already a line to volunteer for the firing squad_ ,” the other added.

Locus shut off the radio. The silence was consuming and the wasteland in front of him didn’t make it any better.

He stared at the sword hilt in his hand, which he had grabbed without thinking. Then, he pressed the activator.

The blue light immediately shot out into the form of a plasma sword. It worked flawlessly and without hesitation.

Felix was dead, he thought.

They were wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/Ns** :  
> -I began this story months ago with the focus being on the curious AU concept of, what if Felix really was a “mercenary with a heart of gold”? Then, Episode 19 of Season 13 happened and I realized that hey, this story has the potential for a fix-it for all the Lolix fans out there. I was not happy with several directions the writing took, some unrelated to Locus and Felix, so I guess this is kind of a way for me to vent.  
> -One of the reasons I sidestepped just following off of the events of the finale for this AU is that I found it too easy for the Reds and Blues to just fly up on a broken down pelican to Hargrove. So! Time to escalate their pains.  
> -”civilians” - come on, they have to have children and elderly on this planet. Grey had to have been exaggerating.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felix tries to understand what’s happening. Tucker has even less patience in doing so. Locus just has a bad day.
> 
> Thank you all so much for the comments and kudos! :D I'm so glad you're enjoying the story so far. I already had this chapter completed, so I wanted to share it as soon as I could. Again, I can't guarantee scheduled updates, but I'm working on this whenever I can!
> 
> \---  
> disclaimer: red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
> warnings: major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, future AI drama, weapons of mass destruction  
> \---

_Crash Site Bravo_

After six hours, this had become decidedly unfunny. It hadn’t even been funny to start with, but Felix was finally at the end of his rope.

They had taken his mods and his helmet. The armor they finally removed after he continued to complain about his chest hurting. A doctor he wasn’t familiar with kept coming back and she was frustratingly upbeat. What was more disturbing was the fact she was wearing Federal armor.

Why was Vanessa using Federal soldiers? What the hell had he missed between leaving base and waking up at the Communications tower?

He tried to think quickly over the possible explanations. Maybe they had come to a truce. Maybe that’s why the Communications tower had been abandoned. Somehow that involved him being incarcerated. It wasn’t like the Feds gave a shit about him, outside of being frustrated with his aiding the New Republic. Only one of their own hired guns would want something like that.

Felix felt a wave of unease as he considered the possibilities. Maybe...there had been a trade. The Communications tower for his arrest. It didn’t make sense to him, but not a lot did in the last few hours.

Every time that door opened and he saw the flashes of Fed helmets, he panicked over the thought of green accents also appearing in the doorway. If there had been a truce and this was some sort of agreement between their sides--giving Felix up for maybe more ground--made his stomach twist and churn.

Vanessa wouldn’t do that, he thought. She knew he was dedicated to sticking around, at least until they were close to victory. He kept making jokes about the useless alien gear, but she had to have known by then. They had been working together for nearly four years. She had to have known he wasn’t just there for the goddamn money anymore. 

Well, the money _was_ a factor, but Felix had to have faith that the one woman he trusted most would know him better than that. 

When the door opened a second time that day, he waited for either Vanessa to appear or the worst case scenario--where Locus finally showed his face.

To his disappointment and relief, neither were there as the door was shoved aside and someone he didn’t fully recognize stepped over the threshold.

A man in gray and yellow armor stood by with one of the guards--one of the Fed guards, at that. Felix glared at them both. 

“All right, this isn’t funny anymore!” he snapped. “Where’s Vanessa?”

She had run off that first time without a damn word. He had demanded to speak with her more times than he could count and no one had bothered to give him an excuse why she had abandoned him there. 

“Kimball’s busy,” the gray-and-yellow man said, removing his helmet and handing it to the guard at the door. “You’re just going to have to put up with me.”

Felix froze as he took in the sight of the person before him. The armor could have been salvaged by anyone, but the face beneath it was unmistakable. Agent Washington, in the flesh, grey hair and deep stress lines included.

It was like seeing a ghost and Felix was momentarily stunned as he looked up at the former Freelancer agent and Wash approached the desk.

“Wash,” he said. He had to blink rapidly, unable to believe it. “Holy shit. You really are alive.” 

He thought the last impression he remembered before being knocked out and arrested by Andersmith’s team had been a mistake. But it really was Wash.

Wash sat down opposite of him and his eyes never left Felix’s. He didn’t seem happy. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re dead. You were. Heck, man, I saw your corpse.” He saw the bullet hole and exit wound. You couldn’t really fake a death that real. “Was that some kind of Freelancer trick?”

“I don’t follow,” Wash said, unblinking.

“Doppelgänger stuff. I'm sure your guys are glad you’re not dead, regardless.” Felix dropped his grin. “Seriously, what’s going on? Why am I under arrest?”

“You’re under arrest for aiding and abetting the enemies of Chorus,” Wash said, almost blankly.

There was a pause, because Felix had to seriously try to decipher what Wash had just told him. The attempt to approach this with humor evaporated.

“What?” he asked, startled. “A-are you accusing me of working with the Feds?”

“Not the Feds, Felix,” Wash said, like he were dealing with a small, incompetent child.

Felix bit back the angry snarl he wanted to throw at the ex-Freelancer. This was ridiculous. He couldn’t talk with the man if he wasn’t making sense. Fuck his crypticness especially.

He forced himself to breathe and take a moment to rein in his temper. 

He had to figure out what was happening. There had to be a logical explanation. Being face to face with Washington was a good start.

“Okay, so, let’s just assume one of us isn’t crazy. Let’s assume that it’s you,” Felix began, forcing himself to speak civilly. “Can you explain, _nice and slow_ , what the hell is going on?”

He was wary as Wash just stared at him, blank faced and utterly impassive. The ex-Freelancer didn’t say anything at first. He shifted so that he was leaning forward and he laced his fingers together on the table as he stared Felix down.

“What’s going on is that Hargrove, your former employer, is trying to kill us off without damaging his aliens goods. He’s been systematically pushing at our defenses, here at Crash Site Bravo and back at the Rebel base,” Wash said. Every word felt like a bullet point. “He hasn’t used the MAC cannon or worse, because he still thinks he can make a grab for those weapons. Thinks he could use them to save him from the UNSC, who are rapidly approaching Chorus as we speak.”

Felix just stared at him.

What?

What the fuck...was he talking about?

Wash continued. His eyes were cold steel.

“Right now, your former mercenary grunts are being thrown at us and our few remaining AA guns, like Hargrove is trying to literally see what sticks when he throws them,” he said. “We just have to hold out a little longer until the people who heard our call for help finally get here. We just have to hold out that long and then this entire facade of a war is over.”

Felix didn’t know who Hargrove was. What mercenary grunts? He didn’t have underlings. He could order New Republic soldiers around, but he wasn’t part of the chain of command, not really. He had come to Chorus with a bag over his shoulder and a desire to make a quick buck off of alien technology. He had remained there, shackled by a growing need to see this to the end. 

“Because this is over, Felix,” Wash said, his eyes the only thing expressive on his face. They were shining. “It’s _over_.”

Felix opened his mouth and the words barely followed. “I don’t…”

He didn’t understand. He didn’t...

“Here’s the thing, Felix,” Wash said, shifting slightly in his chair. He leaned closer again and his expressive mask never once changed. “I don’t trust you. I didn’t when we first met and then you had to prove me right by betraying us. You and Locus were working together to force the people of Chorus to continue their war until they all killed each other.”

That was a lie. That was a fucking lie.

“I didn’t--!” Felix began, anger and confusion swamping his chest again.

“And now you’re trying to get out of this by claiming you’re not the man we all knew, fought, and defeated,” Wash said, interrupting him. He shook his head. “Give it up, Felix. This game of yours is over.”

“What game?!” Felix exclaimed. “I didn’t do shit. I didn’t betray any single one of you. This is insanity.”

Wash just stared at him. “Yeah, but we're not the crazy ones. It’s you trying to keep pushing this.”

“Pushing _what_?!” Felix demanded. He sat back, exasperated, even as his heart was racing. “God, you are making no sense! I thought you were a cryptic bastard before, but what is your problem?!”

His questions didn’t even get a raised eyebrow. Wash just sat there, watching him with an impassive expression. Felix couldn’t stand it.

Had everyone lost their minds? Nothing made any sense. Maybe he had lost his mind. Maybe he was the crazy one. 

A thought and a person suddenly drift across his thoughts. 

“Wash,” he began, dreading an answer. “Where’s Tucker? Is he here?”

“Yeah, he is.” Wash’s head tilted slightly to the side as he watched Felix. “He’s the one who killed you two days ago.”

Of all the things they had tried to tell him, that was one of the craziest. He sank back in his chair and tried to picture the wayward teal soldier, who could barely toss grenades right, trying to fight him with real intent.

“That idiot…” Felix’s throat was suddenly dry. “He couldn’t manage to kill me. He could barely even hit Fed grunts.”

“I guess that’s just one more thing you’re wrong about,” Wash said, coldly.

There was just something about the way Wash was looking at him that made Felix feel like he had been stabbed. He remembered what it was like to be stabbed in the gut; seven years ago, he had felt it literally when Locus left him a goodbye gift on Valenta. It was the last time they crossed paths on the mercenary trail until he realized his old teammate had followed him to Chorus.

Wash got up and left him there, stunned and speechless. Felix stared at the closed door. The yawning solitude of the cell became more and more pronounced.

The building emotion in the back of his mind grew and grew until he realized it was panic. He had tried to smother it for the last six hours, knowing it was useless and something he just couldn’t give into.

He suddenly and abruptly--and most likely inevitably--lost a grip over that panic.

He thrashed against the handcuffs until they bit at his wrists and broke open the earlier cuts he had caused doing the same thing when he woke. Panting, Felix kicked at the underside of the table and sent the other chair screeching across the room.

“ _Fuck!_ ”

**0000**

_Tartarus Crash Site_

Locus felt like swearing. The only reason he didn’t was because it would make him look like a madman in the middle of the smoldering wreckage of the _Tartarus_.

He had wasted over a day combing the debris. He was lucky that none of Hargrove’s scouts had spotted him or bothered to come back to the site. He was beginning to think Hargrove had dismissed the idea of using the nukes altogether or maybe he had forgotten about them in his state of duress. Locus still feared the idea of his former employer having those options, so he pressed on with his hunt.

Just before noon on that second day, he found what he had been hoping to find.

The _Tartarus_ had been a prison ship, but it hadn’t taken much effort to outfit with more appropriate weapons of war. Hargrove’s resources were impressive and even now seemed unbeatable. It was apparently easy to misplace weapons of mass destruction during the course of the war, when you were the in charge of acquiring them from hands that could supposedly misuse them. Lost in the shuffle, some had found their way to his private reserves.

Felix had always complained that they had to waste time manually killing off each person on Chorus. Locus vaguely agreed at the beginning. He didn’t like dragging out this sort of conflict. It always seemed...easier to just end it quickly.

Control wanted the landscape mostly unscathed, however, and a nuclear strike from space would have been the exact kind of negative press he wanted to avoid. The nukes were there in case something went horribly wrong on Chorus and they had to quickly eliminate witnesses. It would have been a point of desperate action.

And it certainly had reached that point for the Chairman.

Locus felt ill as he slid down the pile of rocks to get down to one of the lower levels of the wreck. He had spotted the sleek black containment unit, glinting obsidian past the grime caked on its surface. He had hoped it would be intact despite the crash. The heavy casing would have survived, or so he thought, and he was glad it had. Otherwise, they’d be dealing with loose radioactive material. 

It was an eerie feeling to approach the container. He knew what lurked inside of it. If it hadn’t gone off yet, it wouldn’t go off without prompting. But it was still there and Locus, if anything, was feeling more mortal than ever those last few days of his life.

It had taken him another hour longer to pry the siding off of the containment shell. He used a piece of warped pipe as an impromptu-crowbar. There had been one side of the shell that had been slightly bent. To his relief, it went flying into the debris pile to reveal that he had found the correct side of the bomb.

The shell was still deceptively plain and looked like any other explosive device he might have found as duds during the Great War. Locus removed his helmet and wiped sweat away from his brow.

There was a control panel along the side. He had been given the launch codes as one of the commanders of the ground team units. He knew there were other caches of bombs that had been hidden on Chorus and he knew that as long as Hargrove had the codes himself, it was possible for him to remotely activate any of the bombs.

Locus wasn’t sure what Hargrove had waited for, honestly. Maybe he was still hoping to grab the artifacts and run. It wouldn’t save him from being marked a criminal by the UNSC, but it could at least give him monetary assurances he could still survive as an outlaw.

No matter what his driving force was now--survival or pure revenge--Hargrove was too dangerous to allow him to have something of this magnitude. It was bad enough he had the _Staff of Charon_ still at his disposal.

Locus stared at the control panel of the WMD and its dust-coated screen. Slowly, he took off his right hand glove. Once, he could have done this remotely, but that was no longer an option outside of Hargrove's domain.

This wasn’t the only thing he could have done to help. He wasn’t even sure this counted as helping--since he had been the one to help bring this bomb and others to Chorus. There was no making even on this.

Still. He was the only one who could do it and he couldn't do it behind a prison door. 

Bracing himself, Locus swiped the side of the control panel, which would only respond to a select few people's bio-signatures. It took a second, but it booted up. It flashed to black and then only offered a simple virtual white keypad. Locus hesitated, but then typed in the code he had memorized months ago.

Once he put it in stand-by, he could alter the access codes. He could then lock it down and move onto the next cache site. He only hoped Hargrove wouldn't know what he was doing and wouldn't notice until it was--

His heart leapt when the screen froze and then went red. The side of bomb facing him let out a low hiss.

On the screen, almost blinded by the red, was a prompt: KEYCHAIN INCOMPLETE.

Locus acted on instinct, slamming his fingers back down onto the screen and hoped that he could reset it with his fingerprint again. There was nothing else he could do otherwise.

“Damn it!”

The red went back to black so quickly, Locus almost worried that he had acted too slow and it had triggered the sequence.

Silence reigned and Locus almost fell over when the white keyboard reappeared. He hastily swiped his fingerprint again and the console went dark. 

Locus leaned on the side of the container, breathing shakily.

That...had been too close.

He had forgotten. He had nearly gotten himself vaporized because he had fucking forgotten about the second code.

It had been a method to keep what Hargrove saw as bickering partners together. Hargrove had less faith in their partnership than Locus had once had. Felix's impulsiveness also made it necessary to split up the launch codes. Because he had never expected to need the bombs, Locus had mostly put it out of his mind.

Somehow, he had forgotten in the span of a few days that he was working alone now--and there were too many things still hanging in the balance that needed to be amended to that solitude.

It took a minute to calm down. He was a wreck compared to what he had been months ago, before the simulation soldiers had come to Chorus, when he was still content with being a puppet and a weapon rather than a real man. He wanted to blame what had happened days ago for his frayed nerves, but Locus was trying to avoid placing blame on outside influences for his actions.

He needed to calm down, so he did. Locus stared at the now-blank screen on the side of the metal crate. 

“Damn it,” he said, quieter. He was trembling, mainly from the adrenaline rush.

His plans were now in disarray and he should have known that already before starting them. He needed to get his act together. _Now_.

He had to call Washington, then. There was no way around it. They couldn’t disarm the bombs now, so they had to think of new solutions. Getting them out of Hargrove’s control was the highest priority. Letting Chorus know they existed was the first step.

Sitting down in the shadow of the metal shipping container, Locus brought up an old frequency. He could only wonder if the communications relays could handle it.

“Washington,” he said, knowing that if he could be heard, the other wouldn’t ignore him. “We need to talk.”

There was a long, long pause. Locus let his eyes wander. He had no choice but to wait and hope. 

True to his nature, Washington was cautious. Maybe he was trying to trace the location Locus was broadcasting from. It wouldn’t matter, since Locus could likely move out faster than any of their pelicans could arrive. When Washington spoke, he sounded casual. That immediately put Locus on edge.

“ _And here I thought you went running_ ,” the ex-Freelancer said, almost too pleasantly. “ _Calling to check in on Felix?_ ”

Locus stopped, blinking several times.

“What?” he asked.

What...did that mean?

Washington continued, chuckling, as if he didn’t notice Locus’ pause. “ _I never thought he could be so stupid and yet so skilled with faking injuries. Really. How did you two fake the sword? That was one hell of a magic trick. And that scar was a nice touch._ ”

Staring out at the debris field, Locus opened his mouth, but nothing came forth.

“ _Locus?_ ” Washington asked, almost irritated.

Locus ended the call.

It felt impulsive to just end it, especially when he had something important to warn the other man about. But he couldn’t listen any longer. A chill had gone over his skin and sank down into his bones.

That...wasn’t possible. Felix was dead. He had to be. The sword was still in Locus’ possession and it worked.

But why would Washington lie? Of all the people on Chorus, Washington had been the one who used truth dangerously as a weapon. He had helped to shake Locus loose with vicious, yet accurate information about himself that he hadn’t been able to see. The ex-Freelancer had never lied or twisted the truth, like Felix was prone to doing. Why would Washington lie now? Why about this?

Slowly, Locus looked down at the sword at his hip. It was real and a testament to what he had witnessed. Felix was dead. He had died. Locus had been there and he…

Exhaling shakily, Locus turned his head and stared back toward the mountains, toward the people of Chorus. Something faint and dark grew up in the back of his mind, like a rising shadow of dread and doubt.

_Felix._

Slowly, he rose and got to his feet.

**0000**

_Crash Site Bravo_

“Maybe he hit his head on the way down,” Grif said, as he took hefty bites from his apple.

“More likely he hit his spine,” Simmons said, while he and the other Reds sat on crates playing cards. “Seriously, he was dead. Dead as dead.”

“Like Meta-dead?” Donut asked, flipping a card over.

“Yeah. Like Meta-dead.”

“Never did peg that orange rat for being part-bear, part-shark, but maybe there’s some family connection,” Sarge added, humming thoughtfully.

They were all sitting out by the main entrance to the crashed ship. It was a quiet day and most of their crew had already finished up anti-aircraft gun duty. Carolina had warned they needed to keep a constant vigilance with the AA guns, because Hargrove could come back at any point with the _Staff of Charon_. They had barely survived the first assault on their valley base and it was only through a lot of sacrifices of brave men and women who went for the guns that they were able to push him back. 

Now, they were still on high alert. Tucker had wanted to try to relax with his teammates while they had a lull between fighting with lingering merc forces who were attempting to target the AA guns up on the cliffs and within the valley’s nooks and crannies. 

Instead, they were talking about the thing that had been keeping him up for the last several nights.

“I can’t believe he’s actually trying to play the amnesia card. What a tool. What an absolute piece of crap,” Tucker said, shaking his head. God, it pissed him off.

“Actually, he’s trying to sell us an entirely different narrative. Not sure that counts as amnesia. More like delusions,” Epsilon said. He tsked. “Always knew he was crazy, but this is definitely unexpected.”

“Well, what exactly did he say?” Simmons asked.

Kimball had been too upset to interrogate him herself and Tucker didn’t really trust himself yet to do it either. THere was no point in getting a story from Felix anyway; there was no mistaking his involvement. He was insane for trying it, but Felix tried it.

“Told several of his guards and Dr. Grey that he works for the New Republic and always had. Never betrayed us and never worked with Locus. Says he hates the guy,” Epsilon said, rattling off the details. Tucker was glad he remembered them, since he was too angry to recall them all. “He claims he doesn’t know how he wound up at the bottom of the tower, but he swears that he doesn’t know anything about a Control or him being an evil waste of matter.”

“It’s all lies,” Tucker said, bitterly. “I just--how could he be saying all of this when he knows he’s done? How crazy is he to think this could actually save him? What’s the _point_?”

Grif was nibbling on the core of the apple like an ear of corn. “Is there anyway that he might have really hit his head and came up with all this?”

“Ooooh, yeah, like he’s reliving his undercover days on a loop?” Donut asked, perking up. Next to him, Lopez shook his head in disbelief.

“No, that doesn’t make sense,” Epsilon said. “He’s talking about stuff that never happened. Whatever loop he’s on doesn’t match up to the facts.” 

Like Wash being alive. According to Felix, they never saved the soldiers kidnapped by the Feds. Wash had apparently led an escape that saw to him, Sarge, and Donut being killed in the crossfire. Lopez was eventually recovered. They never found Freckles, whom Felix didn’t really know by name; he thought it was just a MANTIS droid. They had never found Doc either, apparently.

Chronologically, things matched up. Felix was only a few days off and had the right year. The war, according to him, was still on-going and the casualties continued to climb for both sides, ever since the Feds took the remaining simulation soldiers’ decision to side with the New Republic as a huge propaganda insult.

The weirdest and most disturbing thing, aside from his blatant and frankly disrespectful lying, was that he was consistent. 

“He hasn’t fucked it up once,” Epsilon said, a little edgy about it. He crossed his holographic arms against his chest. “I’ve been monitoring everything he’s said and he’s dotted all his i’s and crossed all his t’s.”

“Wow, that sounds like a lot of work,” Caboose said, honestly impressed. Tucker shot him a look, but said nothing.

“Aw, I think we should just skip this mystery business and get down the more important business of making an example out of him,” Sarge said, grumbling as he sat back to glare at his hand of cards.

Donut frowned. “I think Chorus is gonna want to put him on trial.”

“He’ll have the insanity defense at least,” Grif said. He threw the apple out onto the dirt and then sat down next to Simmons.

“If he walks away without at _least_ a quick execution as opposed to a drawn out, painful one, I will be _stunned_ ,” Epsilon deadpanned.

“ _Amen a eso_ ,” Lopez said, never looking up from the rifle he was cleaning.

Tucker watched his friends and knew they were all slightly less affected by this than he was. He had been friends with that monster before they had been, if they ever were at all. He had trusted Felix implicitly, with training and with helping to rescue their friends from the Feds. He had looked up to that scumbag as someone who really, actually wanted to help, beneath the jerk exterior.

Wash had warned him, before slipping away to help the crews with the AA guns, that this was going to be hard to get through with Felix acting this way. It was one thing to deal with Felix being alive--but to have to face him acting like he was still that long-lost friend was just the biggest insult.

The more he thought about it, the angrier Tucker got.

He stepped away from his friends and beelined for the elevator. He hadn’t had the chance to speak with the prisoner on his own yet. Epsilon, along for the ride, said nothing as he vanished from sight, but their other friends were startled by Tucker’s abrupt departure.

“W-wait, Tucker!” Simmons called after him, worried. “Maybe you shouldn’t go talk to him.”

Tucker scowled as he waited for the other man to continue. “Why not?”

“Well, you’re kinda...angry,” the maroon soldier said, fidgeting.

“You’re damn right I’m _angry_ ,” Tucker snapped, before turning and stomping back toward the lift.

He was more than angry and lingering questions made that anger blister and boil.

Felix was going to answer him, one way or another.

**0000**

The guards at the door all too easily let him go inside the cell. Tucker still wondered why the people of Chorus thought so highly of the simulation soldiers, but he guessed they had earned some respect from the general public over the last few months.

They didn’t question him as he stepped inside, alone, and shut the door behind him. 

Felix was dozing at the table. He was still cuffed and now only had armor on from the waist down and even that looked stripped. Grey had fixed up his ribs earlier, but Tucker knew that the mercenary hadn’t been getting too many house calls. He was lucky no one had broken in yet to put a bullet between his eyes.

He flinched at the sound of the door opening and closing, but when Felix lifted his head, Tucker felt a tendril of disgust at how relieved the other man looked when he saw who it was entering the room.

 _What an arrogant bastard_ , Tucker thought, clenching down on that anger.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Felix said, immediately. He had purple-black circles under his eyes, even on the side that was messed up by the scar. He tried to sit up properly and his tiredness seemed to be replaced briefly by hopefulness. “Please tell me you’re not crazy, too, Tucker.”

Tucker sat down opposite of him, letting the chair screech on the floor loudly. He stared at Felix and tried to distract his anger with focusing on how exhausted Felix looked. That made him feel a little better.

“That really depends on what you mean by crazy,” Tucker said. “Am I crazy for seeing some guy I definitely blew up a few days ago sitting right there in front of me? Apparently.”

Felix just stared at him, eyes pinched slightly with confusion and then growing disappointment. He exhaled sharply and hunched over the table as his hands clenched into fists.

“Shit,” he swore. “What the _fuck_ is going on?”

“You should really be the one to tell us,” Tucker said, crossing his arms against his chest.

Felix’s eyes darted to his and he had the audacity to look angry. “I _did_! I don’t know how I wound up at the Communications tower! That place is always crawling with Feds! I remember leaving the underground base sometime after 1700. I was driving close to the upper path by the tower, but I couldn’t get close for obvious reasons.”

Tucker had listened to his explanations earlier. It was bizarre, mainly because how could Felix honestly believe that they’d ever believe it? Maybe Grif was right and Felix had hit his head from the fall. That was the only way they could explain his consistent, insane responses.

“Like what reasons?” Tucker asked, hoping that maybe they’d catch Felix in a lie.

“Uh, I would get blown to pieces? Like Locus probably being on patrol there? Ever since that run you and your rainbow squad tried to pull to infiltrate the tower-- _after I told you not to_ \--they’ve been over that place like roaches,” Felix said, irritated with Tucker’s apparent lack of knowledge. His acting skills were still top-notch. “I wanted to see if there was another way in. The last thing I remember is parking the warthog under cover and then going up to the ledge. Then, bam, I’m on my back below the tower and apparently a _fucking fugitive_ for _no clear reason_!”

Honest to God, Tucker wanted to hit him.

This man was either at the very end of his rope and wanted to fuck with them all before they executed him, or he had literally gone insane. Either way, Tucker felt zero pity for him.

“You’re a fugitive because you were helping Control kill the people of Chorus,” he said, glaring. “You and your buddy Locus.”

“ _Who the fuck is Control?_ ” Felix hissed, leaning closer over the table. His glare made his eyes twitch. “And, excuse me, did you just call that psychopath my _buddy_? Do you have any idea what that monster’s done to all of us? To _me_?”

He had some fucking nerve saying that. It was almost hilarious if it weren’t so infuriating.

“You two are partners. Stop trying to lie,” Tucker said, hands clenching over his arms. “Though I guess you aren’t friends anymore, considering he left you for dead.”

Felix laughed; the sound was almost hysterical.

“That’s right. He left me for dead,” he said. “ _Seven fucking years ago!_ ”

He slammed his hands on the table as best he could and sat back jerkily. The mercenary was breathing heavily as he stared out at space. Tucker watched him and saw the clear cracks forming in Felix’s facade.

To his surprise, those cracks weren’t the ones he was expecting. 

“This isn’t happening,” Felix said, as if he decided Tucker was no longer in the room. He shook his head slowly as he gazed out at that blank spot. “Dear God, this isn’t happening.”

“It is. You’re going to go to trial and face the music for this, Felix,” Tucker said, louder. “No amount of your acting is going to save you now.”

Felix finally looked back at him, outraged. “I didn’t do anything!” 

The way the light overhead hit his face made that same unease in Tucker’s chest from earlier come crawling back. Tucker was forced to see all the details, specifically of the scar. 

Felix noticed his silence and probably the unease, because he sat back a little and seemed suddenly uneasy himself.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

Tucker uncrossed his arms only to grab hold of his knees tightly. “Your scar.”

Fuck, why was he bothering? It didn’t matter where it came from. It was still Felix.

Felix had hesitated at the question. He glanced to the side, as if trying to see it himself, before looking back at Tucker.

“What about it?” he demanded.

“Where did you get it?” Tucker asked.

Felix again hesitated.

“...I already told you,” he said, slowly, as if Tucker was being stupid.

Tucker made a face. “What? No, you didn’t.”

The look of disdain Felix sent him reminded him of the old Felix he had known and trusted months ago. “Two weeks after you and your guys were brought to the New Republic camp. You saw me without my helmet and you asked.”

He didn’t remember when he had first seen Felix without his helmet, but he sure as hell didn’t remember there being a scar. Felix had that kind of face that was soft around the edges and just _oozed_ easygoing friendliness. It was familiar and handsome, but not in a way that always stuck out in a crowd. Add on that boyish grin he threw around before he came out as a backstabbing cockbite, it was the kind of a face that a con man could and would put to great use.

“That never happened,” Tucker said, gripping the sides of his seat beneath the table.

Felix sneered, tossing his head back to the side. “I guess it didn’t. Fuck’s _sake_.”

“Where did it come from?” Tucker asked again.

Part of him oddly didn’t want to know. Somehow, knowing what caused it made it real and Tucker...was vaguely certain that it shouldn’t have been real. 

Felix looked back at him with blazing, angry eyes. He was silent for a moment and looked like he was sizing Tucker up.

“I didn’t dodge a grenade properly,” he said finally, tersely.

Tucker snorted. “Like my grenade five days ago?”

Felix just turned to look at him properly with a glare. His eyes were bright and his sneer matched his biting tone.

“No, more like a grenade thrown at my employer three years before you ever showed up on this godforsaken planet,” he snapped. “General Mahala agreed to a peace treaty conference, about six months after I was hired. It was a trap. Mahala was sniped out and before I could even do a fucking thing, someone threw a grenade on the table next to us.”

Tucker had no idea who the fuck Mahala was. He knew there had been three other New Republic generals before Kimball was elected to command. 

Felix’s eyes twitched. “Care to guess whose grenade that was?”

Tucker didn’t have to confirm it. 

It had been Locus’ grenade, then. Following Felix’s story, it was the only answer that made sense. 

He didn’t know what was making him so anxious as he stared back at Felix, whose glare never wavered. He had encountered Felix’s con man behavior before and had fallen for it. But after he was exposed, Felix never bothered with it again. 

Didn’t he see that he was cornered? Why was he bothering with the charade anymore? It was driving Tucker crazy.

He exhaled sharply. “You can’t expect me to believe that you’re some...other Felix. That we just so happened never to meet. And that there was an evil Felix you never met. Like that’s some weird shit, dude.”

“You gave birth to an alien baby,” Felix deadpanned.

“ _Don’t you bring_ \--wait.” Tucker’s anger faded as rapidly as it had appeared. He hesitated. “I never told you about Junior.”

Felix laughed, though it was tinged with an anger of his own. “Are you _kidding_ me? You never shut the fuck up about him. You showed me that basketball picture like six times. I tried to take it from you during training and that was the first time you ever landed a hit on me. Knocked me straight down.” He scoffed and looked away. “Then you _still_ wouldn’t shut up about the kid. Drives me fucking nuts, but hey, whatever motivates you.”

Why?

Tucker could hear himself breathing at that point.

Why was he doing this? Why wasn’t he breaking away from this...this routine yet?

It was insane. It made no fucking sense. 

Kimball thought Felix was just on his last legs, that he was desperate and this was just the backstabbing bastard trying to mess with them one last time. Tucker knew what a desperate Felix looked and sounded like, though. He had been on his last legs days ago, when Tucker sent him off the ledge with a grenade.

This...wasn’t the same.

“What?” Felix snapped, at his silence. He looked nervous again, covering it up with anger. “Seriously, _stop_ looking at me like that. It’s fucking weird.”

Tucker, for once, really didn’t have a lot to say. He felt like he couldn’t breathe suddenly. This was really just too goddamn much.

He got up out of the chair. He needed to get some fresh air and to clear his head.

He needed to talk to Wash. Maybe Church. They’d make this make sense. They always did.

Felix seemed to flinch again in alarm as Tucker stood.

“Hey! Can I at least have some water?” he called out. “I haven’t had anything since the last time someone was kind of enough to let me take a piss.”

Tucker swayed as he stopped near the door. 

“I’ll send someone else,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse.

Felix abruptly became panicked. “Tucker, wait! Don’t just leave--!”

At the door, Tucker stopped again and turned to look at the other man. Felix still looked like he was terrified of Tucker leaving. His exhaustion had come back, almost even worse than before.

“Please, seriously,” he said, sounding so goddamn sincere. “I don’t know what I can say to make you guys see I’m not lying or whatever you’re accusing me of. I don’t know what’s happening. Please, just--just don’t leave. I’m going to lose my fucking _mind_ in here.”

Tucker didn’t know what was worse--the fact that Felix sounded and seemed just like he did when they first met or that he was actually swayed, for just a second, to believe it again.

Felix’s eyes went wider as Tucker grabbed the door handle. 

“Tucker!” he shouted, but Tucker didn’t look back at him.

He let the door slam behind him and then he took off running for the outside, before he suffocated. He got to the next level of the ship and came to a stumbling halt before the exit. He leaned against the bulkhead and had to brace his hands on his knees before he toppled over.

Next to him, the blue hologram of his AI friend buzzed into existence.

“Well,” Epsilon said, his voice heavy. “That went terribly.”

“What was that? What was that, Church?” Tucker asked, breathless.

Epsilon just hovered there and seemed to dim, just slightly.

“I don’t know,” he said, quietly.

Tucker sank back down on his haunches and hated Felix. He hated him, for everything he ever did in life, and he hated him for not dying when he should have--

And then leaving them _this_.

**End _Chapter 2_.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, Epsilon has a problem and Felix is suddenly, finally, acquainted with the problem of Chairman Malcolm Hargrove.
> 
> A/Ns:  
> -Remember when we were all super worried about Felix being killed defending the reds and blues at the start of season 12? Remember when we trusted him as an honestly good-hearted jerk? Tucker remembers that too and it kinda sucks.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wash, Carolina and Epsilon go to the old New Republic’s headquarters to get files for Grey. Meanwhile, Felix gets acquainted with the problem of Chairman Hargrove.
> 
> Writing this in between homework might not be the best idea, but hey, let’s live recklessly.
> 
> \---  
> disclaimer: red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
> warnings: major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, future AI drama, weapons of mass destruction  
> \---

**New Republic Underground Base**

They had gotten the message out. The war was supposed to be over. Hargrove had lost. And yet, here they were, nearly a week later, still under siege. It felt immensely unfair.

Then again, Wash thought, it was just their brand of luck. He shouldn’t have been surprised by it.

They couldn’t afford to spend too many resources or time on their newest and more annoying problem: namely, Felix. Dr. Grey had been insistent that they cover all their bases with his apparently bout of insanity. Kimball had greenlit it, reluctantly. She was more concerned with repairing AA guns that had been hit by mercs that had gotten lucky with a rocket launcher yesterday. 

Wash had volunteered to make a run for the old New Republic base and he wasn’t surprised Carolina went with him. He hadn’t seen her much; she had been working overtime around their defenses. Oddly enough, Carolina seemed to be in better spirits than most of them. Wash envied her. 

Then again, she and Kimball had been spending more time together during all of the reorganization of the army and camp, so maybe the reasons for her cheerfulness were obvious. Wash wisely didn’t bring that up, even though he wanted to tease her on it.

Carolina had taken off her helmet when they got inside the base, which Wash had thought was a bit brazen. They only had so many soldiers guarding the compound, but Chorus’ rainy season was moving in and Wash had to admit it was getting warmer. It was humid inside the caves instead of damp and even within his environmentally controlled suit, his hair was starting to stick to to his forehead. He’d have to see Donut about a haircut soon.

After checking in with the head of security at the camp--a Fed soldier, Wash noted with some amusement--they beelined for the old medical lab along the southwest side of the cavern.

“What do you make of it?” Carolina asked as they walked, her helmet tucked under her arm.

“Of what, Felix?” Wash asked. He shook his head. “He’s a pathological liar and a con artist.”

“And murderer, don’t forget that,” Epsilon said, appearing with a small flash next to Carolina’s shoulder.

Wash nodded at the AI. “Oh, hey, you’re back. Thought you’d be sticking with Tucker for a bit.”

He had a feeling that the AI had been content to stick around Tucker and the other sim soldiers out of solidarity reasons lately. They had all been pushed to their limits, but this setback of not immediately be done with the fighting had rattled the reds and blues to a degree. Wash knew they were tired--psychologically and physically. Epsilon was just as worried about his friend as Wash and Carolina were.

“Nah, I’m more useful out here,” Epsilon said, flexing his holographic arms, like showing off muscles. Carolina shook her head but otherwise ignored him.

“He’s not doing well with this, is he?” Carolina asked, glancing over at Wash.

She wasn’t talking about Felix. Wash sighed and knew she meant Tucker.

“No, he’s not,” he said. He hesitated. “Kimball’s not doing much better.”

Their only remaining general was barely keeping it together. She had been hit hard by the realization they still had to live through Hargrove’s last ditch effort before help could reach them. Every single life lost between now and when the first UNSC ship showed up would likely seem like the greatest failure to Kimball, because those lives shouldn’t have been lost at all.

“She’s definitely worse off,” Carolina agreed, grim. “She feels a lot of guilt over ever bringing Felix in. She won’t listen to me when I remind her that she wasn’t the one who first invited him into the fold. She had two predecessors who did the same thing. There’s no way she could have known.”

Epsilon made a tsking sound. “Yeah, well, tell your girlfriend to relax. It’s over and done with, at least concerning making sure he can’t hurt anyone else.”

The blessing and curse of Carolina was that if she didn’t want to, she was never flustered by teasing. She just shot the AI a controlled smile while Wash bit the inside of his mouth to avoid laughing.

“First off, what girlfriend? And secondly, don’t be so sure it’s over,” she asked, keeping her voice light as they finally got to the med lab. They didn’t even have anyone left to guard it. “If he keeps this act up, there could be problems.”

“Don’t you start with me, heart-eyes. I’m onto you and your pining,” Epsilon shot back, upbeat. “And yeah, yeah, I know. The UNSC better hurry the hell up and get here, I swear to God.”

Both Wash and Carolina hummed in agreement. Every passing day they outlived any kind of incoming missile barrage or Hornet strike or even ground mercs just made it seem like they were in for a longer wait.

Carolina went up to the nearest console and removed Epsilon from his drive slot in her suit. She inserted him into the console and he reappeared in a flash, likely going through the data they needed faster than Wash could even imagine.

“You got this, Epsilon?” Carolina asked, surprising them both. She inclined her head toward the door. “I want to do some perimeter checks while we’re here.”

“Oh, yeah, just peachy,” the AI said, bitching good-naturedly. “Always doing the grunt work around here.”

“Keep complaining,” Carolina told him, smirking.

Wash took his helmet off, but hesitated putting it on the desk. “Want me to come?”

“Nah, just sit tight,” she said. She grabbed her helmet and put it back on. “I’ll be back soon.”

Wash waved at her departing back before looking back down at Epsilon. “You don’t have to worry about being shot, at least, if you’re complaining about doing hard work.”

“I could still be shot, totally. It’s just, you know, harder to hit the tiny microchips that makes up my entire being,” Epsilon said. He seemed to be sulking. “What am I looking for, exactly? Just any medical files on this dirtbag?”

“Yeah, I guess. Grey wasn’t specific,” Wash said. He sighed and leaned against the edge of the wall opposite of the console. “I cannot believe she’s seriously giving this any measure of thought.”

Epsilon did a little shrug with his hologram form. “It is a little weird, I will give her that,” the AI said. “That scar is impressive enough on its own. Maybe he fell into a weird dimensional thing like Doc did.”

“Why would he think he could lie his way out of his, though?” Wash asked, frowning.

“Who knows? Maybe Grif was right. Maybe he hit his head and honestly believes what he’s saying. He’s traded one delusional life for another.”

Wash looked away and found himself falling into quiet thought as Epsilon continued to work. 

“That’s a little disturbing,” Wash finally said, breaking the silence.

“Why do you say that?” Epsilon asked.

“Because…” Wash shifted to face the AI properly. “If he really doesn’t remember doing everything he did wrong, is punishing him worth the same?”

There was a tense moment, where both had to decide if what Wash was saying meant anything more than what he intended to--and that was solely about Felix and his apparent amnesia. Epsilon hovered anxiously as he looked at Wash, looking for any sign of some kind of subtle jab at their own personal problems, before deflating a bit.

“I think remembering what evils we do isn’t as important as making sure it can’t be repeated,” the AI said, serious. “Let’s not forget that no matter what he thinks happened, he’s a manipulative bastard and we can’t trust him.”

Wash nodded slowly. “Right.”

They both fell quiet. Wash watched as various medical documents popped up on the console screen, flashing by as if Epsilon was merely flipping through a book. It was odd that he hadn’t finished yet, though. Wash knew it would only take seconds to grab Felix’s medical file.

“What’s taking so long?” he asked, curious.

“I’m getting everything they ever had on this prick. Surveillance media, initial contracts, his mission logs,” Epsilon said, rattling off information as the screen continued to flash. “I have a feeling that if we dump concrete evidence on his lap, we’ll get a genuine reaction.”

“What if he denies it all still?” Wash asked, frowning.

“I think at that point, we would have to count it as a genuine reaction, Wash.”

Wash took a second to realize Epsilon was utterly serious. “That’s crazy.”

“He might be,” Epsilon said, a shrug in his voice. “But let’s just hope the actual reaction is something that won’t drive the rest of us mad with him.”

Wash thought about Tucker--who looked increasingly like he hadn’t slept in days--and his stomach clenched. He only wanted the reds and blues to catch a break. Tucker’s transformation into the soldier he was now was a bittersweet sight to Wash. He was glad his friend was stronger. But the apparent cost of that growth made Wash feel twinges of guilt resonate deep inside him.

The UNSC had to get to Chorus. Fast.

“I--oh shit,” Epsilon said, flickering.

“What?” Wash asked, immediately alert.

“Incoming pirates, to the northwest,” Epsilon said, rapid fire. He cursed. “Oh, shit, they have at least two Mongooses.”

The mercs had been using new vehicles, likely from the Chairman’s personal stores, but the idea of them getting inside the old New Republic base of operations was startling.

“How did they get inside the base?” Wash asked, stunned.

Epsilon was flickering again. “Compromised border--Carolina’s covering the entrance they just flew in through. Of fucking course the Chairman knows his way around--he had Felix on the inside for years.”

Suddenly, the AI flashed red, for just a second.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Epsilon swore. “If Hargrove’s hovering above the mountains, he could use the MAC on the caves. He could trap us inside.”

And that meant Chorus would be losing two Freelancers and their AI, even just temporarily, from defending the main camp. Epsilon was needed to help maintain the AA gun alignments during aerial assaults and the Freelancers were obvious assets for mercenary incursions. If Hargrove knew all three were in the caves, that meant he had waited for this opportunity to separate them.

Wash clenched his fists. “Is he above us?”

“I-I don’t know! Stupid ass granite bullshit--!” Epsilon ranted.

“We need to move, now!” Wash snapped.

Epsilon shook his head. “I know, but we need to wait for C. She’s not answering my hails.”

Wash picked up random radio chatter from other soldiers and knew that she was still combatting the pirates who had gotten into the base. She’d need back up.

“She’s still covering us,” he said. He cringed at the idea of a cave-in, again. He walked back over to the console desk. “Yeah, we need to move, right now.”

They only had a skeleton crew at the cave base now, since shuffling people around with all those aerial threats was impossible. They could get to the most secure exit they had and retreat back to the cover of some of the forests where their heat signatures could be masked by the foliage. Ground mercs or the ones on the Mongooses could be a major problem on foot, however. Wash knew they couldn’t linger to test their luck with them.

“I’m still downloading! Christ on a bike, physical media sucks. We need to get those short range towers back up,” Epsilon said, bitter. He started up again. “And I--what are you doing?”

He had noticed Wash come up to the desk and then reach for his data card.

“We need to move, now,” Wash repeated. “Our window is shrinking for extraction. Do you have the files?”

Epsilon seemed to grow panicky. “Yes, but Wash--Washington, stop! I need to be in a suit!”

Wash knew that. Once they met back up with Carolina, they could switch Epsilon out. There was a part of him that just wanted to take the AI card and carry it. 

But Epsilon would be even more fragile and exposed if he was just carried around in a hand. Even if he wasn’t a valuable asset, Wash couldn’t do that to him. Carolina would kill Wash for it, for starters. Tucker would, too.

“Right, well, we have a solution to that,” Wash said, bracing himself.

Epsilon seemed to gape at him before growing frantic in stark realization.

“No, Wash, wait,” the AI said, waving his holographic arms even as Wash grabbed the AI card, fritzing at the disconnection. “I can’t-- _we can’t_ \--!”

“We don’t have a choice, in case you haven’t noticed!” Wash snapped. He reached back with his other hand to feel the compartment just behind his neck.

Epsilon’s voice cracked, from somewhere. “Wash--!”

It wasn’t going to be the same as the neural implants. The suit had basic neural connectivity, but it wasn’t the same as what they once had. They weren’t going to be shoved together again--like they had years ago.

Wash inserted the card without giving himself a chance to second guess himself. He waited for a punch, for a lightning strike. He waited for the end of the world to come when he and Epsilon were finally reunited.

 _Like we were always supposed to be_ , he thought, electrified. 

At the connecting _click_ , it blindsided him before he could properly prepare himself. The entire suit buzzed, like it was building up a charge--

He hadn’t noticed he had fallen over until he was on his side, wheezing. He had a feeling he had blacked out for just a handful of seconds. He could hear fighting a lot of clearer now. Somehow, he doubted the reaction had been anything mechanical with the suit. 

 _It’s all in your head_ , he thought, bracing himself.

Epsilon was deadly quiet, but on his HUD, Wash could see the AI was safely and properly connected with his suit’s systems. 

 _The world continues_ , he thought.

“You big baby,” he said, struggling to his feet. He didn’t know which of them he was referring to.

Inside his head, he thought heard the echo of something like frantic breathing. It petered out into nothing, because it never existed in the first place. He was imagining things or maybe Epsilon was just trying to find the right distance from the neurological connections.

Epsilon said nothing, except to send a map point to his HUD for where the new extraction was, at the back exits of the cave system.

 _Thanks_ , Wash thought.

Epsilon ran to the furthest edges of his suit’s systems without a word.

Then, in the frantic chaos over the radio, Wash heard someone mention Bravo.

**0000**

**Crash Site Bravo**

He had spent approximately five days feeling increasingly sorry for himself and hating every single person he had ever met on Chorus with a burning passion.

Actually, no, he still didn’t hate that one nice scout he had met when he first came to Chorus. She had mercifully covered for him when his attempt to use his first alien technology haul had nearly blown him up while testing a gun out behind the barracks. She distracted curious passersbys looking for the source of explosion while he peeled himself off a tree and she never mentioned it again. Hell, she hadn’t even laughed at him, when Felix knew _he_ would have laughed at him in that position. The only reason he didn’t hate her was because she had been dead for two years and he didn’t think it would do much good to hate a corpse at that point.

Her name had been Marie, he thought. Or Marcy. He couldn’t remember. There had been a few women who had looked like her and had similar names. They were all dead, too.

Everyone else, though, they could go die in a fire.

He was mostly angry at Kimball--and Tucker. He had given them both more time and effort than he probably should have given to his client and then some washed up simulation soldier who could barely fire a gun. He couldn’t save all of her people from every attack, but he had thought Kimball would have seen that without him, she’d have lost a hell of a lot more in the years since she came to power.

This was his thanks. This was what he got for being physically disfigured and constantly putting himself at risk for someone else’s war. 

Felix’s anger was smoldering and flared at infrequent times, between waking to his lonely cell and the few times people came in to give him food. He worried it would be poisoned every time a plate was put in front of him. All the guards looked like they wanted to do it. Especially the Feds. 

In between restless sleep, Felix dreamed of waking to finding Locus next to him, waiting with a knife.

He’d flinch, but the specter wasn’t there when he opened his eyes. All he had was empty space and silence.

One of the few times he actually got out of his chair prison was to take a daily piss. Felix didn’t bother fighting the two guards that dragged him out of the room. He didn’t relish losing his brief reprieve from the cell or the table if he pissed them off needlessly.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize he was at Crash Site Bravo, where he had once recruited Washington and his men to come with him and help the New Republic. They had clearly dug out that cavern path out. Why they were based there and not at the New Republic compound only made him warier. No one ever answered his damn questions.

It was demeaning to be escorted to what amounted to a hole in the ground just around the corner of the prison cell. Felix knew he ought to be glad they hadn’t just given him a bucket. The entire compound seemed quite deteriorated. Felix was more concerned they never ran into anyone else in the halls. The place seemed eerily quiet. Maybe he could have made an escape attempt. Or maybe it was just a trap. He didn’t want to test his shitty luck just yet.

Felix wordlessly let the guards uncuff him when they got to the toilet, tense as the other guard kept a gun raised directly at his head. He was vaguely certain he knew that New Republic guard, too.

“Hurry up and piss,” the Fed guard ordered.

“Give a guy a little privacy, huh?” Felix asked. All he got were two mirrored glares and he glared back before turning around. “This is such bullshit…”

Just as he went to reach for his pants, something hit the ship.

Or rather, the ship started to rumble like something had hit it. Felix stumbled, unprepared for the sudden movement beneath his feet. The guards also reacted, though they seemed like they had been expecting it.

“Oh, hell, he’s back!” the guard holding his shoulder said. Felix tensed up. Who was _he_?

“Cuff him to the pipe and follow me,” the other guard shouted, already taking off down the winding hallway.

“What? Hey!” Felix yelled, as the larger guard hauled him back and then re-cuffed him with his hands wrapped around one of the extended pipes in the wall. “Oh, you fucker. What’s going on? !”

He never got an answer. The guard took off after his partner, leaving Felix standing there, feeling immensely glad he hadn’t pulled down his pants yet.

The ground was shaking beneath his feet and the metal of the ship. Talk about distractions.

Felix decided to take it anyway.

The guards didn’t do their jobs well, Felix thought as he quickly pulled out the fork he had stashed in his sleeve from his last meal. _Tsk, tsk, Vanessa._

He picked the cuffs quickly. He was immensely glad that the war and lack of supplies had forced both the New Republic and Federal armies to use such outdated handcuffs, or else he’d have to find a way to slice the metal off his wrists. He quickly dumped the cuffs to the ground and sprinted down the hallway.

He didn’t have to worry about guards, because everyone had gone. He could hear the rumbling louder now. There were explosions, muffled behind the metal hull.

It sounded like a ship, he thought, though that made no sense. Even the Feds didn’t have ships large enough for that kind of reverb. 

Maybe--maybe the UNSC had finally gotten there. That would be too damn convenient. After all those years, the military had finally rediscovered Chorus? 

Felix thought he might run into more Fed or New Republic guards on his way toward what he thought was the exit, but he didn't. He did see waves of civilians pouring deeper into the ship’s hull, away from the outside. Some looked worse for wear--some were injured and covered with grime. Felix had to do a double take as he saw crowds of civilians, a rare sight. They were mixed, with Fed and New Republic civs, and they were terrified.

None of them paid him a second glance, so he reached the ground level within minutes. The explosions were far louder and seemed to be increasing with frequency. Panting, Felix jogged out into the shadow of the ship and covered his eyes to adjust to the bright mid-day sun.

Or there was sun, very briefly. It was beginning to grow cloudy from waves of smoke. Felix stared across the canyon and saw that the source of most of the rumbling was from the massive frigate holding steadily above the camp.

It wasn’t an UNSC ship. Felix squinted up at the massive frigate and realized that, whoever they were, they weren’t there to help.

Watching the ship open fire with a cloud of missiles and sabot rounds on the scattered camp solidified that fact.

Felix could only stand in the shadow of the halved ship, stunned by the brutality of it.

 _What in the name of God is happening on this planet?_ he asked himself, as people ran past him blindly for the cover of the ship embedded in the cliffs.

The urge to run hit him hard.

Clearly, he wasn’t welcome at the New Republic any longer. He couldn’t trust any of his friends to back him up now. Chorus was apparently sinking a hell of a lot faster than he had ever imagined. With Locus still out there and the Feds--or whoever this new enemy was--apparently on the brink of blowing the New Republic out of the water, Felix knew he had to find a way off the planet.

At the very least, he should have been running for cover. He could have just dodged the incoming explosions and made it to the forests. He knew those rainforests like the back of his hand. He didn’t have his armor anymore, but he could scavenge off a corpse later. He could lay low. He could survive and maybe even make off with some of the few alien tech pieces he had rightfully earned.

Felix knew he should have been moving, but after a moment of reflection, he realized he was still standing at the entrance to the divided ship.

Hundreds of meters above him, missiles just collided with the hull of the ship and he realized that was probably where his jail cell had just been. There were explosions going off everywhere in the valley. People were screaming. This was a whole new kind of warzone that he hadn’t seen since he was splattering alien guts over decimated colony ruins.

He saw a pile of bodies over by the smoldering wreckage of what looked like a warthog, but then he realized the bodies were still moving. The flashes of color stripes were recognizable immediately. 

Without much thought involved in the process, Felix ducked and rolled for the cover of the jeep, just behind the three people desperately hoping it’d protect them from an aerial strike. It wouldn’t. Palomo didn’t even have his fucking helmet.

Before any of them could speak--Palomo’s mouth was already open and Jensen had gasped as she scampered up onto Bitter’s back--he cut them off.

“Get everyone out of here,” he ordered, wincing as another flash closer to them flared up. “Get inside the damn ship instead of taking cover in the open like this. Who’s in charge?”

None of them moved. Only Bitters had the sense to go for his pistol, but Felix ignored him. Jensen had frozen up in fear. 

Palomo squinted at him. “Uhhh, you should be in jail.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure the jail just exploded, so build a new one,” Felix snapped. He exhaled sharply when the three lieutenants just stared at him. “ _Look_ , let’s just get everyone to cover. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

He should have been running. Why the fuck wasn’t he running?

Bitters shoved Jensen off of him, but only dragged her along with him as he suddenly heeded Felix’s command. Palomo yelped and flung himself to his feet to follow. Felix glanced back over the edge of the jeep and saw another barrage of fire coming. He got to his own feet and dashed after them, back to the entrance of the ship.

The ground shook violently as the firing reached the ship, but the hull was still strong enough to block most of the damage from coming through. Felix skidded to a stop when he saw the lieutenants had fallen into another pile. From their angle behind one of the bulkheads inside, they could see glimpses of the fighting outside. Felix wanted to yell at them for still being panicked kids after all those years of training, but, well, they were panicked kids. 

There wasn’t much they could do at that point. They weren’t prepared for aerial fights, at least not from what Felix remembered. He heard counter fire; those AA guns Washington had mentioned were being used apparently. That was as much as they could do now.

Crouching a few feet away from the lieutenants, who glanced at him worriedly as he did, Felix kept his eyes on that sliver of the outside battle.

“Who or what is that?” he asked, when he saw the flash of the exterior of the giant spaceship come into view again.

“That’s Malcom Hargrove’s ship,” Jensen said, apparently having found her voice. She still squeaked though.

“Hargrove?” Felix repeated, struggling to figure out just who the hell that was. The way everyone said his name made him sound so...god-like. 

His question was met with silence. When he looked over at them, the lieutenants were unhelpfully watching him with open distrust.

“You really don’t know who he is?” Bitters asked, in disbelief.

“No one fucking believes me,” Felix said, trying not to get angry, because it was doing fuck-all for him at that point. “But no, I _don’t_ know who that is. I don’t know why everyone keeps saying I do.”

Palomo, never one to shut up even when he was afraid, perked up. “He’s a bad guy. Like, real bad. Wanted all the alien tech on our planet, so he thought he could just kill everyone off with hired mercenaries.” He paused. “I mean, really, all they did was make the war worse between us and the Feds, but now Hargrove’s just trying to kill us, so yeah, fuuuuck him.”

Felix tried to mentally digest all of that. These kids were too stupid to manage all those lies, like Kimball or Wash might have been able to. 

“I...I don’t understand. Why?” he asked, frustrated. “Fuck, I came here for the alien tech, but why would he try to kill everyone? How could he think that would work?” 

“You’d know better than us, dude,” Palomo said. “You’re one of the guys he hired.”

“That’s a fucking lie,” Felix snapped, ignoring how Jensen flinched. “I was hired by Blume four years ago, then by Mahala, then again by Higgs, and then again by Kimball when she was elected.”

Bitters scoffed. “You were caught on tape revealing the whole thing.”

“I--what?” Felix asked, caught off guard.

When he turned to face them properly, all three of the lieutenants were watching him with varying degrees of suspicion. Palomo sat up properly.

“Yeah. Tucker and Epsilon caught you talking about it like some kinda cartoon villain,” he said. “You and Locus went on both sides to trick us into thinking we hated each other for years and years, so we’d all kill each other off for Hargrove.”

 _Who the fuck is Epsilon?_ Felix wondered.

“Well, we _did_ hate each other, but you guys made sure we never stopped hating each other. So it still counts,” Bitters said. Palomo nodded in agreement.

That was just insane. How could they just be tricked into fighting? Felix had arrived after the civil war had started, first of all. What could he possibly do to make the ruthless Federal attacks worse? Sure, he had sniped out that one Federal general, but it had been retaliatory, after Mahala and after he realized the Fed bastard had hired Locus. 

Finally, Felix shook his head. “I didn’t. That wasn’t me.” 

Palomo, Jensen and Bitters exchanged a look.

“Uh, really?” Palomo asked.

The urge to sigh heavily and just lie face down on the ground was overwhelming. 

“I swear,” he said, scowling. “Why would I do that? What could I possibly gain?”

“I remember something about a TV,” Palomo said.

“Jesus Christ,” Bitters said, likely rolling his eyes. “Look, just--oh, crap, move!”

Felix immediately looked back toward the entrance and saw a flash of orange. He immediately grabbed Palomo and threw him back down under cover of the bulkhead as the missile made a luck strike on the entrance. He ducked his own head down as a horrendous screech and the smell of molten steel filled the air. For a second, he could only hear the ringing of the explosion, but there was no resounding crash to follow up.

Breathing heavily, Felix looked back at the entrance. Through the smoke and debris cloud raining down, he could see that the strike had warped the frame of the main gate. It was on fire and a whole wall of twisted metal and melted piping was barely visible through the haze.

There was a rapid pulse of an AA gun and there was no additional missile strike. Felix held his breath and then released it when nothing else shook the ship. 

None of them moved again until it became clear that the firing was lessening. Felix didn’t hear any nearby hum of the ship, so more than likely, they had pushed it back again.

He was starting to take Malcom Hargrove a little more seriously.

“I do agree this guy’s a right prick,” he said, grunting as he pushed off the ground with his arms.

“Why are you helping us?” Jensen asked, so abruptly, he hesitated.

It sort of stung. In fact, it did. Felix stared at her, and the other two men, and he knew then that they really didn’t know him.

They really, really didn’t. 

Felix had to take a second to compose himself.

“Unlike what you people think,” he began, “that’s what I was hired to do.”

All three of them just stared at him. Palomo nervously rubbed the back of his head, dirt and pieces of metal debris falling from his wiry hair as he did.

“Right,” he said, sounding like he only just barely believed it.

Felix sighed. It was only a matter of time before order was restored. He still had a window of opportunity to get out. He had no idea how long he could last on Chorus on his own, however. If Hargrove was intent on wiping out everyone on the planet, it didn’t seem like there were too many options to merely sit on the sidelines.

He didn’t want to die with these people thinking he was some monster either. Four years ago, he wouldn’t have cared. The New Republic had just been a paycheck. It was supposed to have been so damn easy.

But he hadn’t expected to get stuck there once the Feds started blowing up ships. He hadn’t expected Mahala or Blume to get killed the ways they did, and then the next general getting blown up right after he told everyone he would bring them salvation. He hadn’t expected to take a nervous, brave fourth general under his wing and spend so many nights sharing small talk with her just to keep them both from losing their minds as the body counts climbed day by day.

He hadn’t expected his own personal demon to follow him and join the other side--just to continue their sick cat-and-mouse game that had haunted them both since the UNSC threw their battered minds, bodies, and souls out into the civilian world without a second thought.

Felix laughed quietly as he looked at the damaged ship hull. Honestly, if this was losing his mind, it had been a long time coming.

He stood up slowly and took a steadying breath. There was only one real thing he could do.

“There is something I want before I go back inside a cell,” he said, glancing over at the lieutenants, who had watched him warily.

“Wh-what?” Jensen asked, voice squeaking.

Felix smiled, the gesture grim and sharp.

“Let me see that so-called confession.”

**End _Chapter 3_.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, Locus has questions and Kimball learns to hate science.
> 
>  **A/Ns** :  
> -Another grievance I have with the series’ writing that I wanted to tackle here: Epsilon and Wash never really did get a moment to reconcile the whole “I killed myself in your head when I was supposed to be your matched AI partner” thing, did they? Whoops.  
> -Epsilon ships Kimbalina, don’t even kid yourselves  
> -If anyone would give good!Felix the chance to talk, I think it would be the lieutenants. He hurt them badly and they'd kill him if they had to, but he was likely there as a mentor figure for a long time before bad!Felix was revealed, back when they were likely just young teens.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments! Like whoa! I’m so glad you’re enjoying the story, and thank you for your patience. I have minimal time to write (since I’m writing about five other things right now for IRL projects/work), but I’m still very much interested in this fic. :)
> 
> \---  
>  **disclaimer** : red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
>  **warnings** : major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, future AI drama, weapons of mass destruction  
> \---

 

The cave had gone to shit rather quickly. Wash made brief note that was a phrase he had said or thought far too often in his life to be considered normal. Mercenary forces were flooding in. All of them were likely desperate men who had minimal understanding of what was coming to Chorus: both UNSC forces and Hargrove’s growing unstable desire for revenge.

He was more concerned about the very brief mention of Bravo over their radio channels before it all fizzled out into static. Something was happening back at the main base. That made him move even quicker, dreading the possibilities of being hit on both sides.

After dodging three mercs who had been using the height of a stone ridge to fire down at him, Wash was forced to get creative by throwing a grenade up over the ridge to distract and hopefully maim some of them. The blast did the job, giving him enough time to run out and shoot down the remaining two mercs, who were too disoriented to dodge in time.

Three down didn’t mean anything. The place was still swarming with mercs, because the shouting from the Chorus soldiers continued as did the gunfire.

“Epsilon, have you been able to hail Carolina?” he asked, catching his breath by an old concrete structure.

The AI was a constant buzz in the corner of his vision, even though he wasn’t projected yet. “Yeah, she’s tied up with those goons at the front.”

“We should probably go back to help,” Wash said.

“No, she has it under control,” Epsilon said. That was the funny thing about Epsilon, Wash noticed. The guy really got serious when he had to.

“Great,” Wash sighed. That was probably the truth and Carolina was probably even having a good time, but too many close calls on Chorus made him edgy about not staying on his teammate’s tails. He took the time to kneel and reload. “Well, this could have gone worse. Right?”

Epsilon flinched; Wash didn’t see it, but he was pretty sure he felt it.

“I don’t know what you mean,” the AI said, steely.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Wash said.

“No, I don’t think I do, Washington.”

Wash sighed again, this time out of aggravation. “Look…”

“Don’t start,” Epsilon snapped.

“Can you reach anyone outside the cave?”

“ _This isn’t_ \--oh.” The question had caught Epsilon off guard. He seemed to stumble briefly before getting control of himself. “Uh, yeah, no. No, same problem as before with the signal not being strong enough.”

“Fantastic,” Wash said. Then, he immediately continued, “I think we should talk about this.”

At that, Epsilon reappeared in front of him, angry, holographic and fritzing blue. “Holy _shit_ , _stop_ it.”

“What?” Wash asked, rising out of his crouch to move along the wall, leading up to a stone ridge. He had spotted a suspicious shadow that might have been the source of gunfire that came shortly after he spotted it.

“This isn’t--this isn’t the time,” Epsilon said, clearly upset and Wash didn’t really understand it. _He_ was calm, wasn’t he?

... _why_ he was so calm, of course, was something Wash also didn’t quite understand. He took it as it was, however.

“I’m sure,” Wash deadpanned. “You’re going to go back over to Carolina’s suit after this. You’ve been with Tucker a lot, too. And we just proved we won’t spontaneously kill ourselves if we link up. Seems like a thing to talk about.”

“This isn’t linking up,” Epsilon said, still struggling to get the words out.

Wash sighed. “I know.”

He was glad for it. The mere memory--real or imagined--of their actual implantation still haunted him even when he was awake. This was nothing like that invasion of his mind. There was almost a polite distance between man and machine, letting the suit act as the implant device instead of Wash’s own brain.

Still. Echoes of something familiar leaked over that buffered link. Wash was struck by that familiarity and the realization that maybe, he wouldn’t be haunted still if he could just… shut that door, inside his head, suit or no suit.

Closure. That was the word, Wash realized. Grey would absolutely love to help.

“This isn’t a good time, Wash,” Epsilon said, a little softer.

“When, then?” Wash asked.

The AI sputtered. “Why do you _care_ now?”

“I’ve had a few close calls recently that made me realize that I have a few things to put to bed yet.”

“Yeah, well, I thought we already did,” Epsilon snapped.

Wash turned his head, staring at the AI, gaze unfaltering. “Did we?”

His question hung between them, a heavy shroud. Epsilon had returned his stare and was outwardly still, but he was too still. On the inside, humming loudly in the suit and along the neurological connections between Wash to the suit to the AI, Wash could easily pick up on the anger and the fear boiling over from Epsilon.

“Later,” Wash said, trying to compromise, because Epsilon was right. This wasn’t a good time. They had to get back to Bravo.

He kept moving along the ridge, following the sounds of gunfire to get behind the mercs he knew were just dozens of yards away. Epsilon was still shivering with anger.

“ _You are such a_ \--wait,” Epsilon said, freezing up.

Wash stopped walking, glaring at the AI. “No, please, what am I?”

“Shut up,” Epsilon said, distracted.

“Are you this rude with Carolina?”

“Seriously, shut--” Epsilon suddenly became a purple flame. “Wash, _on your left_!”

Alarm flared as Wash turned his head to the left and saw a blur of black and green. He scrambled backwards, narrowly avoiding the mass of soldier colliding with him. He got his gun up, prepared to fire, but his finger just barely touched the trigger when he stopped himself with sheer force of will.

Standing just feet away, Locus had cut off his path to the other combatants, who seemed to be moving further away from them. Shielded by the ridge, the two soldiers faced each other in the suddenness of their own personal conflict, even with nothing happening beyond recognizing each other. Locus was holding his own rifle loosely in his grip, but Wash knew that the other man was watching him with extreme caution.

There were many things wrong with seeing Locus there. Why wasn’t he cloaked? He could have easily sniped Wash out when the ex-Freelancer had been distracted. There was something off about his posture as well. It made little sense.

“Locus,” Wash said, dread welling up inside his chest. Epsilon, having vanished from sight, was a furious beacon across his HUD and somewhere, deeper, in the suit.

“Agent Washington,” Locus said in greeting. He wasn’t raising his gun. He sounded calm. That made Wash even more anxious.

“So, you still are working for Hargrove,” Wash said. Was it strange that he was disappointed? Not just because of the threat Locus posed either. He wanted to make sure Locus paid for what he had done, but maybe it was just his own fucked up way of healing that made Wash wish that the repayment had come with full agreement from the merc himself--

“No, I’m not,” Locus said, shattering that line of thought. “But he gave me an excellent opportunity to get to you.”

There was too much to be dissected right there, with guns blazing all around them and the merc clearly waiting for their own fight to continue. Wash stared at the other man and tried to pry deeper than his blank visor. What was his angle? Why was he doing this, if not for Hargrove? Was it revenge? Was it whatever twisted motivation Locus had developed to get under Wash’s own skin for weeks that was driving him to this place now?

“Wash, don’t fight him,” Epsilon whispered, his own anxiety through the roof. Calculations mixed with worry and all he was projecting was _don’t do this without back up, at least find Carolina, at least find someone else to watch your back--_

Wash knew he didn’t have that luxury of time.

“Shut up and let’s do this,” he said, before raising his rifle and firing.

**0000**

Locus had thought the invasion of the base was a last minute gift from the universe after he heard the encrypted orders over the radio, on stations he still had access to and Hargrove foolishly kept open. With so many mercs causing havoc with the remaining Rebel and Federal soldiers, it was all too easy to slip into the caves undetected. He had avoided Agent Carolina deliberately, letting her handle all of Hargrove’s unlucky troops. He had only spent a handful of minutes hunting down the ex-Freelancer he needed.

He needed to make sure his message was heard and by someone who would actually listen. 

He also needed information of his own.

Understandably, Washington had not reacted calmly to his appearance. Locus had to dive low to avoid the incoming fire, but instead of going for cover, he rushed closer, kicking the gun from Washington’s hands. The ex-Freelancer returned the favor, punching out with such a high degree of accuracy that Locus almost thought Washington had wanted the gun out of his hands to begin with. Locus dropped his own rifle, mainly to deal with the sudden knife aimed at his visor.

He grappled with Washington’s arm, pushing back, leaving both men struggling over the direction of the blade. It lacked the wildness of their fight at the tower, Locus noted. Violence for the sake of excusing conversation.

Unsurprisingly to Locus, Washington spoke.

“You know, we didn’t get it,” he said, grunting. “How Felix could still be alive and you having that sword. Does it still work?”

“Yes,” Locus said, without hesitation, even as his thoughts became wild with possibilities. “You’re serious, then.”

Washington kicked out, forcing the merc back. “About?”

“About Felix still being alive.”

That almost made Washington stop for too long, leaving Locus able to dive for his rifle. Wash dove the other way, behind a rock that probably would chip away once they began to exchange fire. Locus didn’t move and only kept his gun raised, imagining pointing it right at the ex-Freelancer through the stone.

“You didn’t know?” Wash demanded.

“I found out through radio chatter. I thought they were mistaken,” Locus said, remaining where he was standing. He didn’t bother cloaking. He wasn’t there to kill the man. “I came to verify it with you, among other things.”

Wash laughed. The sound was hoarse and full of a different kind of anxiety than the one that warfare induced. “Yeah, well, consider it _verified_.”

Felix was alive.

The sword at his hip still worked for him.

But Felix was alive.

“I don’t understand,” Locus said. He was suddenly too warm. He was burning, from head to toe, and yet he was just standing perfectly still.

“Yeah, well, get in line!” Wash snarled back at him. “I don’t know how you two pulled it off, but neither of you are going to walk away from this. Even if he isn’t the real Felix.”

What did that mean? Locus wanted to ask. Real Felix? There was a fake one? Did they really just have another Felix--a real one, a fake one--locked up on their base? Could a base like their fragile, broken ship actually hold a Felix, real or fake?

He didn’t have time for this.

He cloaked, closing the distance between him and the rock. By the time the AI could track him and shout out an alarm, Locus had disarmed Washington and hauled him off his feet. He slammed the ex-Freelancer into the dirt, sending him sprawling and Locus stumbling.

He didn’t fall. He stomped onto Washington’s arm that had gone for the rifle spinning feet away from him, balancing on a rock. Locus could almost hear himself breathing as he kicked Washington’s visor violently to the side, stunning him.

“You piece of shit!” Epsilon howled. “Get off of him!”

The AI was panicking. Locus ignored the red-blue tinged hologram floating frantically in the air above the downed ex-Freelancer. The burning was lessening as he started to refocus on his mission.

“Shut up,” he said. He crouched and pressed a knee down onto Washington’s chest to keep him pinned. “Listen to me carefully, Agent Washington. I’m trying to stop Hargrove. He has nuclear stockpiles in several locations that our operatives used to manage.”

“WHAT?!” the AI shrieked to his left, while Washington stilled completely.

Locus ignored him. “You need to start looking for them. I can’t unlock them and disarm them without the second half of the codes. Only Felix knows them. If I can’t fix this, you need to find a way to safely dispose of them before Hargrove decides to use them against us all.”

Washington’s body was taut with defensive uncertainty. “Why… should we trust you?”

“You don’t have a choice,” Locus said. He clenched his fist. “And neither do I.”

“This won’t… make things even,” Washington said, grim. “Not for you or what you’ve done.”

“I know,” Locus said.

He then pulled Wash up by his chest armor and punched him across the visor hard enough to snap his head back.

“ _Wash_ !” Epsilon shouted. “ _Stop it!_ ”

Locus knew that Washington had merely been knocked out and the AI’s subsequent angry silence as Locus detangled himself from its host meant the AI realized it, too. Locus didn’t understand AIs, much less fractured ones.

He grabbed Washington’s ankle and hauled him behind the cover of the rock. He didn’t have a lot of time. His time window had shrunken considerably.

“You’re not going to be able to run for long, Locus,” Epsilon said, his voice heated as he watched uselessly at his host’s side.

“Catch me faster then,” Locus said, feeling oddly calm. Things were slightly clearer about the issue with Felix. He knew where to find his partner, at any rate. “I hope you’re slower than me long enough to disarm those bombs.”

Epsilon shimmered with anger. “You know, your partner is claiming he didn’t do any of this. That he was never partners with you.”

“Is he now?” Locus asked, pausing at the idea.

“Either he really is amnesic and your ideas are fucked for disarming those bombs,” the AI continued, “or he’s pathetic enough to try to lie to us after he got his own ass captured asking for our help. Either way, your plans already _failed_. How do you like them apples, _huh_?”

He stared at the AI for a long moment.

It didn’t matter what the machine said. He had only those options left. He preferred to think of himself failing while trying to fix his mistakes than embracing the failure of nonaction. He turned away from the downed agent and the AI.

As soon as his back was turned, the AI returned to panicking. “Wash, wake up. Wake up!”

Locus walked quickly back toward the direction of the front of the cave, disappearing into the chaos out of sight.

**0000**

_Crash Site Bravo_

The artillery had stopped, leaving the canyon echoing with the aftershocks of noise and violence. Yet again, they had managed to push the ship back with the AA guns, but it was not a victory in Kimball’s mind.

They had probably lost dozens of lives. Many more were injured. They had too many civilians in such a small space. Splitting up between here and the old Rebel base was a mistake, an inevitable one of course, but Kimball still hated herself for not moving things quicker.

She thought more than once about the idea of moving entirely to the caves, but the risk of being trapped like mice was too great. She was even beginning to doubt moving their civilians there. The cliffs allowed them to protect themselves from the _Staff of Charon_ with the guns, both their own and the ones taken from the mercs. It was a constant stalemate, of course, and not one without its unneeded losses.

“I need a headcount for each and every unit,” she called out. “Where are Tucker and Sarge?”

“They’re already out to help with the guns,” one her aides said, walking with Kimball swiftly as they headed for their command center. “We’re regrouping with several incoming scouting parties, but General, we lost contact with the group at the old base. It seems like they were under attack as well.”

“Damn it,” Kimball swore. “No word from Carolina or Washington?”

“None, ma’am, but I’m sure they’ll contact us soon.”

Kimball could not imagine either Freelancer being killed by the mere distractions Hargrove had likely sent their way, but she dreaded learning about her own soldiers’ fates. They had to finish moving their supplies and people ASAP.

Trusting only in those damn guns, though, was not a plan she felt comfortable with.

They had to get rid of Hargrove. Or at least his ship. Kimball grimaced at the thought of all those lives lost, just trying to get to the blasted thing. That was a mission she needed to plan carefully with Carolina and the others.

Sooner rather than later, she thought. Hargrove could not be permitted to do this to her people any longer. The dead piled up outside was evidence enough.

“ _God, I really just want to savor this._ ”

She stopped dead in her tracks when she heard the voice drifting down from the upper level. It was truly, literally, the voice of her nightmares for the last several weeks.

“ _You know, once the Feds and rebels kill each other, I don't know what I'm going to do. I mean, we've been playing these guys for years. How do you just walk away from something like that?_ ”

Kimball was running faster than she had outside, up the staircase to the next floor. She shoved passed one of the lieutenants--Bitters--outside the door where the voice was coming from. The panic that propelled her was only recognizable when she finally spotted the dark haired merc sitting in front of a desk, staring ahead at the screen.

“... _Oh, but then you did something special!_ ” the voice, coming from the screen, continued. “ _You gave these people hope!_ ”

Kimball had her pistol out, pointed directly at Felix, who hadn’t seemed to notice her arrival. Next to him, Palomo and Jensen had and leapt up in alarm at her appearance. The blurry video on the tape continued to play, but her vision tunneled down to just the dangerous man sitting right there in the open.

“What is he doing outside a cell?!” Kimball demanded, outraged and terrified all at once. What had he done? She had no idea which parts of the ship had access to dangerous things or information. How could they just let him sit there?!

“He’s not running, General Kimball, ma’am,” Jensen said, afraid.

“I don’t care,” Kimball snapped. “Get him in cuffs.”

They hesitated. They _hesitated_. Kimball almost wanted to scream at them again, because the look Palomo sent her and then Felix was not a look of fear of the merc. What had Felix said to them? How could they fall for the same trick twice--?

“You heard her, lieutenant.”

Kimball flinched as Felix himself stood up from the desk, his hands going up immediately into the air before she pointed her gun his way again. He turned and nodded toward Palomo.

“Don’t blame them. I wanted to see it,” he said, glancing back to Kimball. The rings under his eyes were blue-black. He looked older than ever. “I’m not going to fight you. No point in it really. I’m cocky, not suicidal.”

“What do you think you are doing?” she demanded, not once lowering her pistol as Palomo scurried over to put Felix back in handcuffs. There was something off about how Felix was moving, or allowed himself to be moved. It was like he was being held up by something other than his own legs.

“Watching videos,” Felix said. His voice, too--it was detached. Like it hadn’t really come out of his mouth.

Kimball’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“I saw the confession tape, Vanessa,” Felix said, turning to look at her once Palomo had stepped back, almost nervously, leaving Felix just standing there in front of the monitors, swaying slightly.

That did nothing to remove Kimball’s confusion or wariness. She waited, watching all that weakness in his posture. Good, she thought, malicious and intending it that way. _Good._

“My apparent confession tape,” he continued. He sounded amused. He also sounded like he needed water. “Funny stuff. Because I don’t remember making it, but I think I’m starting to get what you meant. After the fifth time I saw it, anyway. Yeah. Can’t blame you for that.”

Kimball said nothing, her uncertainty of what his point was preventing her from merely telling him to shut up. Felix let out a low sound, a sigh, glancing upwards for a brief moment.

“That’s me. On the tape.” He closed his eyes--clenched them--his laughter making his whole body shake. “But I didn’t do it. That isn’t me. But it is. It’s fucking _me_ , Vanessa.”

He stopped, taking a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, he was staring right at her and he truly looked nothing like himself. A hollow Felix. A Felix with a big ugly scar down half his face. He didn't look like the Felix in her nightmares.

“I think,” he said, speaking far too carefully, “that I am losing my goddamn mind.”

Kimball had nothing to say to him. She hated him. God, she hated him. She wanted to shoot him there, and honest to God, she had thought she was better than that. She couldn’t deny that she wanted it, however. That compulsion was there, ugly and black in her heart.

Instead, she holstered her weapon and tried to do the same with her anger.

“Get him back to the brig,” she ordered loudly, knowing the lieutenants wouldn’t ignore her then.

She turned and left, unable to be there, unable to understand why, with Felix’s eyes still burning into her back.

**0000**

Three hours later, they were still trying to find out who was dead and who was alive. She had untold amounts of talking to do with her commanders and lieutenants. The Reds and Blues were all off doing their best to fight off remaining mercs in the area, but the battle was winding down now, thank God. Hargrove had given up under the weight of the AA guns, but those guns had to be repaired immediately.

That was why it was extremely confusing and irritating that Dr. Grey had cornered Kimball on her way to find Lieutenant Smith. Grey insisted it was important and Kimball had reluctantly followed her back to the medical center deep inside of the fallen ship.

“This had better be important, Grey,” she said, trying to be civil. She still had to figure out where the hell the Freelancers had gone. Rumors spread that they had gotten stuck over at the old Rebel base. Carolina hadn't reported in and that was terrifying enough to think about.

Grey, despite being spattered with blood from men and women she had been in surgery with moments ago, was in her ever-positive mood. “I know. We’re all quite busy at the clinic, but I thought you’d want to see this as soon as possible.”

She led the general through the medical wing, which was overflowing with the wounded and under-trained medics trying to sooth their pain. Just seeing them made Kimball grimace, but her presence seemed to do the opposite for the injured; they called out to her, some joking and others just giving her thumbs-up as she passed. She tried to smile back at them, to let them know that she _saw_ them. They mattered. They always would.

Grey took her to the back, to where she had set up some small labs to experiment with the alien technology when she could.

“What is this about?” Kimball asked again, as they reached the furthest room, away from the cries of the wounded. There was no one else in the spartan room, just piles of old tech.

“It’s about Felix,” Grey said.

Kimball stopped walking. She stared at the doctor, completely caught off guard.

“What… about him?” she asked, stumbling over a well of emotion that made her want to curse and leave.

Grey glanced at her and seemed to pick up on the negativity. Still, she pressed onwards, leading Kimball over to a workstation covered with several weapons and datapads.

“After the alien technology was zapped that first time when Tucker activated the Temple, I didn’t see too many pirates using teleportation devices,” Grey said, without further preamble. “However, on a hunch, I went through several recent scans of tachyon activity, including the new bursts after we reactivated the alien technology. After I heard about Felix watching that footage today, I thought to tell you about what I found.”

“What does that mean? Tachyons?” Kimball asked, withholding a sigh. She hoped this was worth the distraction.

“When certain technologies are used, sometimes, it creates an impact on the environment,” Grey said, with as much cheer as she normally had when she explained her experiments. She reached over and grabbed a yellow box off the exam table. “Particularly, these.”

Kimball stared blearily at the offered yellow box. “Those are teleportation cubes.”

Grey beamed. “Right. Well! They like to leave ripples when they’re used. After our two armies were officially teaming up, I got into the habit of trying to track the ripples. It wasn’t entirely informative, since they don’t tell us _where_ the users were going, but I wanted to get any kind of data I could. The geometric and astrometric sensors I was using to monitor it were from our mining days, not from satellites, so we know Hargrove’s actions weren’t interfering with them.”

“Where are you going with this?” Kimball asked, interrupting the rambling, overly cheerful speech. She tried not to sound mean about it, but well, this really wasn’t the time.

Thankfully, Grey seemed to realize that and quickly refocused. “I picked up a single ripple last week, just before Felix called into base,” she said, moving over to her computer input, putting the cube down next to the monitor. “I triangulated the position to this region.”

On the screen, a familiar map appeared.

“The Comm tower,” Kimball said, frowning, a question in her voice.

Grey turned around, oddly severe all of a sudden.

“I think, in his last moments as he fell, Felix tried to use one of the cubes,” she said, the bounce that was usually there in her voice now leveled and calm. “I don’t know if it worked. I don’t think it did. The ripple didn’t last long and obviously there was a delay of several days before Felix reemerged. If that could have simulated a death for the alien sword Locus now carries, perhaps that explains some things. But it doesn’t explain everything, such as that nasty little scar on Felix’s face, or the fact that our search teams weren't able to find his body. Of course we never did dredge the water, but still, you get my point.”

Kimball stared at the scientist. The words, although rambles at times, were clear enough for her to understand. And yet she didn’t. She couldn’t.

“Are you...trying to tell me…?” she tried to ask, but the words just wouldn’t come.

“I think it’s safe to say that there won’t be clear answers. Not for a while yet,” Grey said, her voice once again airy. “But General Kimball, it might be wise to start considering the possibility that something… odd transpired when Felix fell.”

Kimball almost wanted to laugh, but even that seemed beyond her body’s capabilities at that moment. “I don’t understand. How could you possibly be _suggesting_ this?”

Suggesting that Felix was--what, telling the truth? That he wasn’t the Felix Kimball had known? Had trusted and seen as a friend? That he wasn’t guilty of murdering and betraying--?

“These devices are strange and unknowable for now,” Grey said, glancing over her shoulder at the general. “My main evidence that’s causing me to consider other explanations, such as a dimensional switch, comes from Mr. DuFresne’s incident.”

“ _What_?”

What did that deranged purple medic have to do with anything? Kimball floundered, trying to remember what she knew about the supposedly-missing simulation medic that the Reds and Blues called Doc. He had been missing since their time at Crash Site Bravo and he had only come back after--

Kimball froze. Gray clapped her hands together, irrationally smiling.

“Mr. DuFresne experienced, in his own words, a dimensional slip while he was trapped by the transportation cubes. Time and space were altered. He drifted between worlds,” the doctor continued. “Whether or not that was all just a part of his mental breakdown, I’ll just have to figure out later! Exciting. But it’s also quite intriguing when we look at our current anomaly.”

“That’s insane,” Kimball said, reeling.

“No, General Kimball, that’s _science_.”

She couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t true.

“He’s the same,” Kimball said, unsure if she was just imagining the pleading in her own voice. “He’s the _same_. How could he be… another Felix?”

She knew his voice. His body language, his smile, his way of looking around the room like he was just looking for familiar faces when he was really looking for threats. She _knew_ him. It was Felix. He was the monster who had nearly ruined everything.

“How are the Federal Army and the New Republic sharing resources and a united front for survival?” Grey asked, interrupting her thoughts. The doctor’s smile became slightly more sympathetic. “The universe is a strange place, I’m afraid, general. Perhaps this is just one more example of it.”

Kimball was left speechless, with Grey rushing off to the clinic to continue working on the wounded. Staring at the teleportation cubes, Kimball tries to digest what the doctor had told her. She really did try.

It made no sense. It was impossible.

Because if Grey was right, the Felix among them now was not the man who had nearly driven her people to genocide. He was something else, a Felix who did not exist in Kimball’s world, a Felix that could have existed but never did, because he wasn’t the man Kimball had foolishly seen as a friend and ally, because he wasn’t really a monster, because he wasn’t to blame for everything that had happened.

Her eyes fell on the map of the communication tower. Tachyons, dimensions, ripples--

She was out the door, her breathing harsh on her ears, before she even realized she was moving. She walked back to the front lines, to her commanders for sit-reps, to find out what was coming next. She walked. She didn’t run.

She absolutely did not run away.

\----

**End Chapter 4.**

\----

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, Locus decides to take matters into his own hands concerning Felix. Felix does not like this. Also, Epsilon continues to be a big baby.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  ** _Two Cities_**  
>  **Chapter 5**  
>  By Nan00k
> 
> Everybody’s a right mess. (How about that last episode? Huh??)
> 
> **disclaimer** : red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
>  **warnings** : major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, AI drama, weapons of mass destruction

 

**Crash Site Bravo**

If there was anything that war and mercenary work had taught him--or rather what competing against other humans had taught him--was that chaos was the perfect cover.

Locus had bypassed the convoys headed toward the crash site, using their clearance space to get by scouts while cloaked, to observe and decide. It had been hours, but with the sun about to set, it was clear that the base was greatly rattled by the attacks. There were still patches of fighting going on all around the jungle surrounding the canyon.

With the base still recovering and most of the better soldiers in both armies out on scouting missions to capture the pinned mercenaries, Locus knew that he had to make his move now. 

Somewhere, in that ship, was Felix.

More importantly, somewhere, down there, were the second half of the codes.

Locus moved, invisible and silent.

**0000**

**New Republic Underground Base**

Compared to Bravo, the old underground base was far less confused and bloodied. Simmons was glad he and the other Reds were sent out to lead the surviving squads out back to Bravo. It certainly beat chasing after mercs in the jungle like Tucker was doing right now.

“Okay, okay, everyone move!” Simmons shouted, calling out over the few lingering lines of soldiers limping or hurrying out of the caves. “We’re headed back to Bravo! Stick with the convoys and the tree cover!”

“Yeah, what he said!” Grif shouted, sitting on the edge of the shattered wall they had found, likely once part of an old barracks. “Trees and cover and shit!”

He lifted his helmet and took a long swig from the metal flask Grey had made him upon request. Wiping his mouth, Grif looked over at Simmons.

“This commanding stuff is hard work, huh?” he asked.

“If by commanding you mean repeating orders, sure,” Simmons replied dryly. Sarge would have said something harsher, but he was out hunting down mercs at that point. 

Donut hopped down from the ledge he had been standing on. “It looks like we’re in the clear, guys. Mercs are all run out of the caves.”

“Probably because Wash and Carolina were here,” Simmons said.

“Yeah, man, why’d we send out those two here when we could have needed them back at Bravo?” Grif asked, putting his helmet back on. He sighed and cracked his back. 

Simmons rolled his eyes, unseen, but he had a feeling Grif felt the gesture anyway. “We did fine without them.”

“We lost like thirty people,” Grif said.

“Sure, but it could have been worse.”

“Like everyone dead,” Donut supplied.

Grif snorted. “Yeah, tell that to Kimball right about now--”

Simmons had been in the process of standing when he saw a flash of gray and yellow on the ground far ahead of them. He stopped.

“Hey… isn’t that…?” he began, making out the picture of two medics leaning over the familiar armor. “Oh, shit! Wash!”

There was only a short distance to run (or jog, in Grif’s case, which was still a sign of urgency from him) to get to Washington’s side. 

“Wash!” Donut and Simmons both called out, causing the medics to look up in surprise at them.

They came to a stumbling halt next to the downed Freelancer. Wash wasn’t visibly injured, but since he wasn’t moving and prone on the ground, Simmons knew that he was hurt.

“He’s all right,” the medic closest to Wash’s head said. “He’s just unconscious.”

“Oh, good,” Grif said, not entirely sarcastic. “I didn’t want to have to tell Tucker or Carolina if he wasn’t breathing still.”

“Yes, well, about that--” the one medic said, fidgeting. 

There was a flash of blue light and suddenly, a blue figure was two feet from their visors.

“Simmons,” Epsilon said, bluntly.

All of them yelped and jumped back, Simmons shouting out, “Jesus CHRIST!  _ Church _ !”

“What’s Bravo’s condition?” Epsilon asked, completely ignoring their reaction.

Simmons took a second, hand to his chest. “Uh--okay? I mean, shitty, but we chased off Hargrove again with the AA guns.”

“Tucker’s squads’ are doing their best chasing down a lot of the remaining mercs,” Donut added, shrugging. “I’m sure they’re fine now.”

“Fuck,” Epsilon said, before promptly disappearing.

Simmons stared at the empty air where the AI had been, flummoxed. He couldn’t remember Epsilon ever being that… abrupt. 

“...what the fuck?” Grif repeated.

“Uh, sir,” one of the medics said, from the ground next to Washington.

“What?” Simmons asked, still startled.

The medic seemed both annoyed and nervous. “Everytime I try to access Agent Washington’s armor, the AI shuts me out.”

Donut seemed just as startled as Simmons felt. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not exactly helping Agent Washington,” the medic said. “He’s not critical, but it would help if I could access his neural grid to make sure.”

“Great,” Grif said, sighing. “He got a bug or something?”

“Can he get bugs--?” Donut began to ask, surprised.

“ _ \--Carolina to any responding teams-- _ ,” a familiar and calm voice over the open channel broke in.

“Agent Carolina!” Simmons interrupted, relieved. “Whew, you survived, too.”

“ _ Of course I did _ ,” Carolina said, bemused even during the aftermath of a skirmish. “ _ What’s happening? I chased some of these idiots into the jungle. Coming back in now _ .”

Simmons almost wilted. “Good. Wash is down right now, so we’re gonna need help with the convoy coverage.”

“ _ Is he okay? _ ” Carolina asked, sounding like she was walking briskly. Still, she sounded upbeat. She almost always did those days, Simmons noted. For her, life was almost consistently improving day to day. He would have loved that kind of optimism.

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Simmons said. He glanced at the prone Freelancer. “But uh, Carolina, you probably should get back here. Soon.”

“ _ You just said Wash was fine _ .”

“Yeah, he will be, but Epsilon’s another story,” Grif cut in. Simmons glared at him.

“ _ What’s wrong with Epsilon _ ?” Carolina asked, slightly sharper. 

“He’s, uh, being weird,” Simmons admitted. There was no real other way to say it.

There was a pause--a weighted one, tense and uncertain. Simmons bit his lower lip, his eyes drifting to Wash and, somewhere, Epsilon.

When Carolina finally did speak, Simmons could hear the sigh heavy in her voice.

“ _ I’ll be right there _ .”

**0000**

**Crash Site Bravo**

“Almost there, guys, hang in there,” Tucker said, helping the last injured New Republic soldier from the back of the jeep. “Get in and get to a medic.”

“Shouldn’t we report first, sir?” one of the soldiers--Evans? Maybe? Tucker was so bad with names--asked.

“Nah, dude, you’re bleeding,” Tucker said. He stopped. “Okay, well, everyone who’s not injured, go report to your commanders. Kimball’s gonna want a headcount ASAP.”

“Yes, sir,” came the multiple replies.

Tucker sighed as he looked back out at the ruined landscape of Bravo. Poor Simmons’ garden was long-since a charred wreck. Blackened earth reminded him of how close Hargrove had gotten. It was a miracle that he hadn’t just used a MAC cannon to wipe them out, Kimball had said, but Tucker knew that the constant barrage of the AA guns had kept Hargrove on the defensive too. Plus there was a lot of useful gear still inside Bravo.

His greed was greater than his anger, Wash had noted. Tucker wasn’t sure that was entirely true, but he kind of hoped it was.

The others were coming in soon. Tucker hoped that Wash wasn’t too badly hurt. Simmons hadn’t been entirely clear on the radio about what the problem was. Tucker could just imagine how annoyed Carolina would be if Wash had to take a med leave for something like a broken leg. Kimball wouldn’t be happy either.

Tucker decided then he would go to medical and wait. He knew that he should have been going to Kimball to help prep, but--shit, he was tired. All he wanted at that point was to make sure his friends were okay. 

As he turned, to face the giant wall of ship that made up the canyon wall now, Tucker saw a glimmer in the shadow of the nearest entrance. He froze. The glimmer was only there for a few seconds, disappearing into the shadows completely, sidestepping several people gathered by the door, but Tucker still saw it.

_ Oh, shit _ , he thought. He knew that shimmer anywhere.

He opened the comm. and started to speak, to alert the whole base. They could capture Locus finally, or at least kill him. If he was sneaking around, he couldn’t have been there to help. Kimball had to know--

Tucker hesitated.

But…

He shut down the comm.

If Locus proved them right--that he wasn’t a good guy, that even if he was trying to be better, he wasn’t an ally--they needed to see it in action. Tucker needed to see it. A base-wide report would cause a huge panic and possibly chase Locus away, too.

More importantly, he knew that this would be the only time he could get an honest reaction from Felix. If anyone could break the act, it would be his ex-partner.

Carolina would have called him an idiot.

“I’m an idiot,” he muttered, hand grabbing his sword’s hilt tightly.

He took off running, knowing exactly where Locus was headed.

**0000**

His ribs were burning. Moving around had irritated them, but it had been the running and dodging explosives outside that had sent the bruises flaring. There was no extra medic to waste on a prisoner and it wasn’t like he was dying, so Felix found himself laying flat on his back on a cot. He had no idea where the cot came from--Palomo and Jensen had dragged it in. It wasn’t the same cell he had been in either. In all the chaos, Kimball hadn’t given direct orders.

He could have run. He could have just overpowered Jensen and Palomo, who were skittish of him but for likely different reasons than earlier that day. Felix hadn’t bothered to take advantage of it, however.

He was tired. He had never been that fucking tired in his entire life. He had spent days awake, injured or just blinded by dust or grenades. War was tiring. It had also been exhilarating in a way that left him winded but alive. It gave him sleepless nights and too many scars to ever make it as a con man without a mask, but it made him feel alive in all the ways an absence of the loss of life couldn’t.

But now he was just tired. Empty. He felt numb. Was that normal when you discovered that you were losing your mind? Or that you suddenly had entered a brand new dimension where you were supposedly a mass murdering psychopath? Felix had to imagine numbness was a mild reaction, if it was.

There were still explosions outside, though far away from the base itself. The last remaining mercs caught between escape and hiding places were giving it all they had, he guessed. Felix had no idea where Hargrove could have gotten them. If they were criminals, the last stand made sense. They didn’t want to go back to prison. Couldn’t, really. Felix could understand, even as he lay in a prison of his own.

The door opened. The rumbles continued. Felix sighed, hearing armor scrape along the floor, stopping just inside the room.

“If you’re here to yell at me more, Vanessa,” he began, aiming for bored and still sounding exhausted, “maybe you should wait ‘til the gunfire stops--”

“Felix.”

“Fuck,” escaped from Felix’s lips before he even opened his eyes.

Sitting up like he had been electrocuted, Felix scrambled up against the wall. The cot nearly tipped over, but he didn’t care about that. He was too focused on the person at the door of his cell. It wasn’t Vanessa and it wasn’t any of the lieutenants. 

Green and black vision, straight from a nightmare.

Felix didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He stared, eyes focused intensely on Locus, who just stood there. Watching him back.

Just a few seconds passed. Locus was a wall of motionless violence. Felix knew that. He knew it as sure as he knew he was absolutely fucked if he didn’t get his hands on a fucking gun.

Locus didn’t seem like he was too concerned about Felix finding a weapon. He did seem pressed for time.

“Get up and dressed,” he said. “Do you know where they stored your armor?”

That was it. No fucking “hey, how’s it going?” or “I’m going to kill you now.” Either would have made more sense than an order to get up. The first option made sense in this insane world of theirs, where Felix was more than certain his enemy was his closest ally, and boy, how messed up was that? The second option was what felt saner to Felix. The Locus he knew would have loved a chance to catch him at his weakest.

Continuing the only real choice of action he had of just staring and hoping for a gun to magically appear next to him, Felix saw the patience leaking out of Locus’ posture.

“We only have a small window. Get up,” Locus said, irritated. He took a step closer. “Are you injured…?”

His voice trailed off. Felix couldn’t see his face, but he didn’t have to. Locus’ silence was terrible and loud.

Locus took a breath.

“What happened to your face?” he asked.

He asked it like he meant it.

Like he cared. Cared enough to be curious, at least.

Even that was too much. 

Felix forced himself to breathe.

“Fuck off,” he said. It came out quiet, like a whisper.

Still, it made an impact. Locus stopped moving, hand still outstretched. Impassive, except for that pause being a loud statement. “Felix?”

“Get the fuck away from me,” Felix said, pushing the air out of his lungs to form the words, leaving each syllable a different volume. “Don’t you even think of touching me.”

He needed a gun. He needed one, right now.

“Where did you get that injury? That mark?” Locus continued, like he didn’t even hear Felix at all. He tilted his helmet, peering closer. “It looks like a scar.”

His hand moved. Felix flinched and he hated himself for it. He saw the hand getting closer, toward his face, and he hated himself for letting fear affect him at all.

“Don’t—!”

“I know that we didn’t leave on the best of terms, but you need to come with me--”

Felix felt that growing panic inside of him die. “Best of terms?”

Instead of panic, he felt fire. It shot up through him, the words whipping the flames to life. 

Locus had stopped, his hand still raised. Felix stared at his ex-partner. That anger roared and burned, an inferno out of sight and yet everywhere beneath his skin.

Felix kept his eyes on Locus’--because after so many years, he came to know exactly where his eyes were beyond the visor.

“You want to know where I got it?” he asked. Anger made his voice shake, almost as badly as fear did. “It was from you. Parting present, back at Armonia, five years ago. You took out Mahala and then left a grenade for everyone else. Thanks, really, for sharing.”

Locus lowered his hand, taking a step back. “What the hell are you talking about?”

His confusion seemed so genuine. Maybe it was. Felix didn’t know if he was crazy or if he had found a world where everything was so royally screwed up that crazy would have been a blessing. He just didn’t know.

But he did know one thing.

“Everyone here thinks I’m crazy, but I know—I know who and what you are,” he said, leaning forward on the cot. “I am nothing like you. You’re a fucking murderer. You tried to kill me. I might be crazy, but  _ fuck you _ , you’re worse than I ever was.”

He knew Locus had been damaged.  _ Sam _ had been too lost in the violence to ever come back, but Felix had thought that letting _Locus_ continue on as he was would have been fine. They had both entered the merc circuit after leaving infantry, but it hadn’t taken long for Locus to prove that Sam was dead, but the war hadn’t killed him. It had been Locus. A breathing scar that never let itself heal. It had enjoyed its existence too much to allow otherwise.

Felix had never thought, however, it would come to this. Chorus had been a job and it had ended up being something more. Honor or something. He wasn’t entirely familiar with the concept, but he had stayed anyway. He was surrounded by doe-eyed moralists who thought that their fight was worth their sacrifices and maybe that kind of thinking was contagious.

It hadn’t mattered after Locus came back into his life. With him came a game only the other merc understood. Felix had to learn the hard way that Locus wasn’t there for money or fame. He was there for a single kill count, the only one that mattered. The last piece to stop a scar from healing.

That’s what Vanessa had told him, at any rate. Felix had told her that was too romantic. She had laughed. Felix believed her without ever admitting it.

He believed it then, staring at a man he hated and pitied and hated some more. No matter if Locus hated him back or cared about him in some bizarre way--he was still a walking scar.

Locus just stood there, watching him. Silence carried, until he broke it.

“What the hell did they do to you?” he asked, voice soft but loud against the quiet of the room.

Felix just sat there, mouth open but he had nothing to say. The fire was burning out; he was too tired and stressed to keep it. He had no idea what Locus wanted—or what he meant. It had been years since the other merc had ever bothered to say something to him. Shooting at him, trying to kill him, sure. Words weren’t really acceptable on a battlefield.

Another explosion went off. Felix flinched and his eyes darted back to the window of the cell. Whatever sort of resistance the mercenaries—or Locus’ crew, whatever—were making couldn’t possibly keep going at that rate. The Rebels and Feds were going to recover quickly enough.

Felix nearly had a heart attack when Locus was suddenly over him, looming.

“Screw you,” Felix said, words flying out as his limbs fought between being locked with icy fear and an adrenaline-filled need to get the hell away. “Get away from me!”

“We don’t have time for this,” Locus snapped, angry, but not going for his weapon. He just reached down, leaning right over Felix like he had the right to get in his space, like nothing had ever happened.

Felix slammed his fist into Locus’ helmet, doing nothing but causing the other merc to stop for a second in surprise and making Felix’s wrist throb. That split second of shock over the idea that Felix would do something so stupid and pointless gave Felix enough time to scramble away.

Or as far away as he could before Locus grabbed him, right under the arm. Felix hadn’t even made it halfway to the door and he shouted something angry and equally pointless, because Locus wasn’t listening.

“Felix!” Locus said, anger bleeding into his voice as he grappled to get Felix’s other flailing arm in his other hand. “Stop this! You’re going to help me--”

“Let go, asshole!” Felix howled, thrashing bodily, because shit, he had nothing else to throw at this guy. “Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Locus snarled and grabbed his other arm, yanking him so hard, Felix thought he felt his shoulder pop. He cursed and kept throwing his weight toward the door.

“Tucker! Vanessa!” he shouted, trying not to panic and failing. “Where the fuck are the guards supposed to be watching me, assholes—? !”

The air in his lungs was forcibly extracted by the blow to his stomach. Locus hadn’t hit hard, or else Felix would have felt his exposed ribcage splinter, but he didn’t have to when he was wearing the armor and Felix wasn’t. His stomach nearly expelled its meager contents as he struggled to breathe. The injury on his side from the fall five days ago was suddenly blistering with agony.

Locus was breathing heavily past his helmet’s filter, hauling the temporarily stunned Felix around and then kneeling to throw the smaller man over his shoulder. There was no reason for the other merc to be out of breath, Felix thought as he was suddenly upside down and still couldn’t draw in any significant amount of air himself.

“We’re leaving. We’ll deal with this episode of yours later,” Locus said, his voice angry and low. “I need your help to bring down Control. If you don’t help me, I’m going to turn us both in and make sure we get what we deserve, even if that means dying with these people. I need your half of the codes, Felix.”

Felix did everything he could to just breathe, ignoring the fuzzy spots in his vision. Locus was moving again, quickly and smoothly, even though every step felt like another punch to Felix’s gut. 

“Whatever’s wrong, we’ll deal with it,” Locus added, quietly. There was gunfire closer to their location. Everything else was a blur.

“L-let me go, f-fucker,” Felix managed to say, wasting air on it. It was about as helpful as weakly slapping at Locus’ armor with his bare, bloodied hands.

“No,” Locus said. “Where did they put your armor—?”

Just when Felix’s vision finally cleared and he spotted the knife on Locus’ hip—just barely within reach, if he could just dangle his arm closer—he heard something. Or rather, someone.

“Hey, asshole!”

That outcry was familiar and comforting and infinitely frustrating all at the same time. Felix knew it anywhere. 

A teal blur rushed at them. Felix heard Tucker shout something else, followed by the sound of his energy sword unsheathing. 

Locus dropped him immediately and Felix hit the ground hard, on his injured side. His vision blurred, the pain icy and sharp. He didn’t know why Locus had dropped him until he heard a whooshing sound and then blistering sparks of energy from two swords.

Locus had a fucking energy sword, Felix realized, struggling to blink past the pain.  _ We are so dead. _

“Tucker!” he shouted. He slowly pushed himself up on his elbows. “Shit…”

He saw the flaring of the two swords slamming into each other and Tucker was quicker than Felix remembered. But Locus was a better soldier overall. He was faster, stronger, more clever. Felix was barely upright by the time Locus had kicked out, getting Tucker’s sword arm with a swift strike.

Tucker’s sword went flying, its owner swearing loudly. Felix’s heart dropped as he heard it clatter somewhere down the hall. Tucker was on his back, already scrambling to get up, a gun in his hand, but he was too slow. Locus was already standing over him. The younger soldier froze, a testament to his inexperience, and Locus kicked that away too.

The gun slid across the smooth floor, coming to a chilling halt by the wall. Felix could see Tucker tense up. He was a sitting duck there, with that other sword sparking in the air above him.

Then, the sword vanished. Locus placed the hilt back on his waist. He remained where he was.

“Stay out of my way,” Locus said, voice tight. He was losing control, Felix realized. 

Felix lunged and grabbed Tucker’s discarded pistol. He raised it and fired. Locus had seen him move and dodged the shot, mostly. Felix fired again, nailing Locus in the shoulder as the green-striped merc dove for the corner. He didn’t reappear to return fire.

“Shit!” Felix tried to stand, hissing when his ribs made him falter. “Alert everyone else! He’ll cloak!”

“Already did,” Tucker said, stumbling to his feet. Did he mean that Locus already cloaked or that he had raised the alarm?

He heard shouting, getting closer, so he assumed both. Felix dropped the gun, mainly because his hands were trembling violently. He coughed, feeling sore and like he was about to start coughing up blood. He didn’t.

“He mentioned codes,” Felix bit out, mind racing. He had no idea what was relevant information. “His suit’s going to be sparking from the hit, even with cloaking on. Don’t let him get past the camp. He’s too dangerous.”

“No shit,” Tucker said, glaring at him.

“He didn’t kill me, but I don’t know what his plans are.” Felix finally got his knees under him, pushing himself up to sit. “Fuck that bastard. Where’s Vanessa?”

He wasn’t sure why Locus hadn’t just killed Tucker, but he couldn’t take it for granted. Locus was there for a game, the chance to prove how inhuman a man could get. It didn’t matter if it was another Locus. It would be the same man.

Tucker wasn’t running after Locus, which was likely for the best. The teal soldier seemed to be favoring his shoulder, where Locus had kicked his sword away. Tucker’s helmet was on, but Felix could feel his stare.

“Okay,” Tucker said, without prompt. “So, you’re not lying about not liking him.”

“Jesus Christ.” Felix glared back, trembling. “You idiot, you could have died!”

“Um, excuse you—,” Tucker began.

“You never listen, ever, do you, moron?” Felix snapped. He gestured between them angrily. “Even if I had my armor, I’m wounded. If I wasn’t there backing you up, you wouldn’t be able to handle him! He could kill you!”

Tucker flinched. “Seriously? I just saved your ass!”

“I…” Felix meant to argue, but the words were getting stuck. He took a deep breath, but it wasn’t deep enough. “Fuck. Fuck.”

He tried to stand, but he couldn’t. His knees wouldn’t. Felix fell back onto his hands from the effort. His was shaking and his lungs weren’t working. Had he broken his ribs?

“What’s wrong?” Tucker asked, sounding further away. Felix could still see his legs, though, bright and in the corner of his eye.

Felix couldn’t breathe, but his mouth was watering. “I…I’m gonna throw up.” 

“Gross,” Tucker immediately said. He leaned closer anyway. “Why?”

He couldn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer. To  _ anything _ .

“Tucker!” a distant voice shouted. Rumbles of footsteps echoing closer. More yells followed.

He stared at the floor, because he couldn’t lift his head. He could hear himself breathing harshly, but it still felt like he couldn’t breathe. The nausea didn’t fade, but nothing came out of his mouth except sharp gasps.

“What the hell happened?!” someone asked, louder.

“I don’t know! Locus tried to take him or something and I helped chase him off, but Felix is—”

“Why isn’t he in restraints?!” someone else shouted. It was a woman. Maybe Vanessa, Felix thought. He wasn’t sure. He wished it was. He couldn’t bear it if it was.

“Does he look like he’s running?” Tucker snapped.

The voices devolved into a rush of noise--like a waterfall, falling backwards, or something. Felix wanted to scream at them to just get moving, to chase Locus down, before it was too late. He just couldn’t get the words.

Someone--white armor, purple or blue markings--slid into his line of sight. There was something bright in her hands, like a flashlight.

“Hey, there.”

Grey, he would have said in recognition, but the words still couldn’t come out. He stared at her and the tiny light in her hand.

“Focus on this, okay?” Grey asked, smiling, kindly. “Can you follow it with your eyes? Just do that for me, okay, Felix?”

He couldn’t remember the last time someone had shown kindness like that. He couldn’t remember anything.

He stared at the light, taking in tight, tiny breaths, and followed it.

_ Focus on that. _

**0000**

“What’s wrong with him?”

Carolina was exhausted. She was worried and irritable and just plain tired. She didn’t have the patience for this. Not now.

She had come back into Bravo, trailing after the Reds and hoping to just move right into helping Kimball put their forces back into some kind of order. She had also wanted to figure out what the hell was wrong with Epsilon, who wasn't talking much and wouldn't get out of Wash's suit. Wash was apparently concussed, so he wasn't talking much either, but he had told her that he was alright and that they'd "talk later." Carolina had reluctantly agreed to be patient.

Then Tucker had come over the comms, sending out the alarm that Locus was on base and that he had attacked both him and Felix. The idea of the two mercs teaming up had sent her running to prevent it, but stumbling across Tucker and Felix the way they had been left by the fleeing Locus had made her reconsider things.

The rumors were still wild and spreading, but the more the camp gossiped about Felix and his state of mind, the more confusing it became. Carolina hated the little murderer, but confusion dulled most of her initial reactions to seeing him out of cuffs and his cell.

The look on his face had also sent her backtracking, particularly when only Dr. Grey had been able to force him to answer to any kind of question. 

Carolina had been to war. She knew that look. Wide-eyed, hyperventilating, tremors. She had seen it plenty of times. She caught Wash in one of those states a only handful of times in the last year and a half, after he had woken from a nightmare. She was sure she would have seen it more often, had she been there right after he and Epsilon had first met.

Standing in the nearest med-bay with Tucker, Grey and Jensen, who had been charged with guarding Felix with Palomo, Carolina let the others speak. She was still deciding.

“That, my friends, was a panic attack!” Grey told Tucker, uncomfortably cheerful as always. “Not that uncommon, really. We have episodes like this every once in awhile with the general population. Civil war brings out the best worst psychological states.”

“Can, uh, you fake one of those?” Tucker asked, awkwardly rubbing his arms. Carolina had been surprised by his reaction earlier. He had been concerned about Felix, though not verbally. He was certainly more concerned than Kimball would have been.

“I don’t think so,” Grey said, tapping her flashlight to her lips thoughtfully. “Not like that anyway. Physiological reactions are obviously harder to fake than psychological ones. Quite impressive, if it is just an act. I’ve never seen it or read about it, anyway.”

That didn’t mean a con man as talented as Felix wouldn’t be capable of it. Convincing them that he was a total innocent of the crimes he was guilty of by reason of not being Their Felix was insane--but also possibly ingenious. Carolina loathed alien technology. It made situations like these so convoluted.

“He did seem really sick,” Jensen said, fidgeting. “What’s General Kimball gonna do now?” 

“We’ll speak with her after she’s less busy,” Carolina told her. She dreaded the conversation.

“Bring him some water,” Grey said, answering Carolina’s next intended question. “Try to get him talking. If that was real, his defenses will be down. It’ll be easier to get to the truth.”

“Uh,” Tucker said, face betraying the immediate unease and anxiety of having to do that himself.

Carolina sighed. She reached for the sink and one of the battered cups left near the counter.

“I’ll do it.”

She didn’t have the lingering emotional attachment Tucker did to the Felix they had been sold earlier on. Her bluntness, as Wash might have said, was often good for getting answers from difficult or complex people.

It wasn’t so good when dealing with damaged people, she admitted to herself as she took the cup back down the hall. They had moved Felix to another room, one without the security of a real cell, but Felix hadn’t said much, let alone made a move to escape, since they had found him and Tucker. She wasn’t sure she’d be any better than a foot-in-mouth Tucker, but at least he couldn’t manipulate her so easily as the others.

She opened the door carefully. Palomo was sitting on the floor, talking almost too quickly for him, while Felix was laying on the cot they had taken from the other room. 

“--and it’s not like we’re totally fucked,” Palomo was saying. “As long as we have the guns, we’re fine, right? That’s what Kimball said. Do you think that Hargrove is gonna give up?"

Felix wasn’t responding, didn’t look like he had been, but he was looking a lot better than earlier. Carolina watched quietly for a moment. Felix looked like shit. He hadn’t even reacted to the door. 

“Felix?” she asked, interrupting Palomo’s rambling, which really wasn’t good anyway. Revealing defense plans to a possible traitor wasn’t smart.

Palomo flinched and jumped to his feet, but Felix only turned his head to look at her. He just stared, with hollow-looking eyes. 

Recognition. He knew who she was.

“You knew me before?” she asked, stepping into the room. Palomo didn’t leave like she expected him to. He just moved over to let her pass, watching warily.

“No,” Felix said. His voice was hoarse, but clear. “You were gone. Dead, maybe. Never showed up. Tucker always said you would.”

“Dead, then,” Carolina said. She smirked, humorless. “I wouldn’t have stayed away for long otherwise.”

Felix said nothing. He just stared at her. Then he turned his head back to stare at the ceiling.

There was no where to put the water but next to the cot. When she looked up, she saw that Felix was still staring at the ceiling. There was something in his posture, however, that made her stay quiet. She waited him out.

“He’s… the same,” he said. “But he wasn’t.”

“Who?” Carolina asked, meeting his eyes without missing a beat.

“Locus,” Felix said. His eyes were more narrowed than before. “He acted and sounded the same. But why…is he like this?”

Carolina didn’t have an answer for him. She watched him and tried to remember every time a man had lied to her, in interrogation or otherwise. It could have been an act. 

But there was a growing possibility, like a virus in her mind, that made her hesitate.

“I don’t know if you’re telling the truth, or if this is a trick, or a real psychotic breakdown,” she said, leaning over him slightly. “But Felix, if there’s anything you know that could help us bring down Hargrove, I need to know.”

“I-I don’t know who he is!” Felix snapped. He sat up, but didn’t get close. He edged back toward the wall, glaring up at her. “It was just…him. Locus was just on their side, on the Feds side. I never…he…”

He stopped and rubbed his face furiously with his hands. He huffed out a watery breath, glaring at empty space, like he was trying to glare at himself. 

“What the fuck is going on?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” she said. She couldn’t offer him sympathy, but she couldn’t find it in herself to call it an act.

Broken people could still be bad.

But sometimes, it wasn’t their fault. That was something she had learned the hard way. 

Kneeling in front of the mercenary, Carolina did her best to remember that. 

“Can you at least tell us about Locus?” she asked.

“Tell you about Locus?” Felix repeated, turning his head to face her.

The shorter man seemed to take in the question and while his eyes didn’t stop shining with pain, he laughed. For a few seconds, his whole body trembled as he chuckled. Carolina frowned as she waited for Felix to calm down. Felix looked back at her as the quakes subsided.

“I can tell you about Locus,” he said, eyes brighter and smile sharp and deadly.

 

**End _Chapter 5_.**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, after story time, Vanessa considers chance, Wash deals with Epsilon and Felix makes some choices.
> 
> **A/Ns** :  
> -I can’t wait for next episode so I can tell everyone about Locus/Sam too. XD


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I the only one who wishes we had an entire season of that Merc show? :D
> 
> Wash and Vanessa combat their individual problems with the hand fate has dealt them. Meanwhile, Felix gets down to business.
> 
> \----  
> disclaimer: red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
> warnings: major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, AI drama, weapons of mass destruction  
> \----

 

Waking up in hospital rooms was starting to become a cliche in his life.

Laying on the bed in the infirmary--the west one, he thought absently, not the smaller one on the east side of Bravo--Wash had blurry recognition of what had happened between meeting Locus at the old New Republic base and waking to Grey informing him he had a mild concussion and a bruised jaw.

He wasn’t in his suit anymore at least. He also vaguely remembered telling Epsilon to chill the hell out several times about the doctors examining him. This had been the compromise: a quiet room, solitude, and a blank-faced helmet resting on the bedside table.

“Finally getting up?” Epsilon demanded, biting and bitter, as usual. His voice came from the helmet, but he didn’t appear. “God, I think you’re just sleep deprived and just want to sleep in. Grif and Tucker are taking bets on you being brain damaged, by the way.”

“What’s our status?” Wash asked, instead of replying to that.

“Fucked, mostly alive, could be worse.”

Wash sighed as he settled back further into the mattress and scratchy blankets. He couldn’t hear explosives or shouting. It was quiet and still inside Bravo’s wreck. He knew, from the hazy report Grey had been kind enough to give him earlier, that they had minimal casualties, but if Hargrove got his guns fixed first before they did, or if he finally gave up on trying to reclaim the alien tech inside of Bravo, they would have problems. Soon.

“How long have I been out of commission?” he asked.

“Six hours,” Epsilon replied. “Grey said you were fine and just need to rest.”

“Great,” Wash said. He slowly sat up. “Man, I hate that guy.”

Epsilon flickered into vision. “Who? Locus?”

“Yeah,” Wash said, rubbing his jaw. He had a feeling Locus had been holding back in the punch, but that guy was annoyingly strong. 

“Yeah, well, how about you don’t fight him alone next time?” Epsilon said, still angry. Wash could practically see the flickers of emotions dancing in the blue hologram.

The AI was always moody. Wash knew that making Epsilon do anything he didn’t want to do was a lost cause. It seemed to run in the family, he mused dryly.

In the quiet of the infirmary, even as he dealt with a headache, Wash’s thoughts drifted back to why he was where he was. The fight with Locus needed to be discussed thoroughly with Kimball and Carolina--if Epsilon hadn’t already. They needed to look at Felix and consider the possibilities that his presence suggested. They needed to worry about nukes, on top of it all.

Wash glanced to the side, at the AI, who was probably sending Carolina or a medic a message Wash was awake.

“So,” Wash began.

Epsilon looked to him, distracted. “What?”

“Are we going to tackle this elephant, or what?” Wash asked, bracing himself.

Hilariously, Epsilon did pause, but the look he sent the ex-Freelancer was both full of confusion and concern.

“What the  _ hell _ ? Are you actually concussed?” Epsilon asked. “I can call Grey.”

“Epsilon,” Wash said, patiently.

“ _ There’s no elephant--!” _

“That wasn’t implantation.”

If Epsilon had paused before, he had frozen up completely at that. Wash waited him out, watching the hologram carefully. Epsilon seemed ready to disappear, but he didn’t. He was watching the human with incredible wariness. Wash kept his expression neutral.

“If you don’t talk to me, Carolina’s going to drag it out of you,” he said.

That did the trick. Epsilon lurched backwards, his wariness replaced with annoyance.

“There’s nothing to talk about! Christ!” The AI threw up his hands in disgust. “Yeah, it was weird! It was unpleasant! But it’s not that big a deal!”

“Then why aren’t you back with Carolina?”

“ _ Wh-what _ ? Are you--are you serious?” Epsilon sputtered, indignant and bewildered. “I have the good nature to be concerned about your dumb ass and you ask me that?!”

“Epsilon, we never did talk,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately calm. It wasn’t forced; he did feel strangely peaceful.

“About what?!”

“About us. Freelancer,” he said. “The implants.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Epsilon snapped.

“We could die, you know,” he said. Epsilon froze surprised. Wash watched him before continuing, “This isn’t like us, back at Sidewinder or hunting down the Director. That, we ran into. We’re not running toward Hargrove. We’re stuck here. We don’t have a choice but to fight to survive.”

It was a different feeling to this fight. He hadn’t had the words for it earlier, but even while they had been trapped at Bravo’s crash site without knowing where they were, Wash had felt a growing unease about their helplessness. They had no where to run. Until help arrived or they somehow beat Hargrove permanently, there was something decidedly different about their fight here than he had ever felt elsewhere as a soldier. 

“I think…” he said, figuring it out himself as he spoke. “After everything, I’d like to talk.”

After surviving the Director, after finding a stable home with the Reds and Blues, after winding up on Chorus where the people had spent years trying to annihilate each other--Wash was abruptly confident in the realization that it wasn’t just Carolina who had to move on. He wasn’t in pain over it. He just…

He just didn’t like loose ends. Not with people who mattered.

Epsilon just hovered there, simmering in anger and frustration--and maybe something else.

“Wash, there’s nothing to be said,” he said, biting each word out, like he wanted to drill it into Wash’s skull.

Wash winced. Perhaps not the best image.

“I don’t believe that,” he said, keeping his voice quiet and calm.

Epsilon just glared at him. Wash tried to imagine what an angry Epsilon felt like, inside his head. The tingles of memory he always had after Project Freelancer had faded somewhat over the years. 

But he could still remember what a grieving Epsilon felt like. Terrified Epsilon. A broken Epsilon. Drowning each other as they tried to both surface at the same time.

Wash closed his eyes and then opened them, resolved.

“You are being such a baby,” he said, groaning as he moved to stand up and get back in his armor. He had to talk to the others. 

“Shut up,” Epsilon seethed.

“No.”

“You are the most annoying person to ever live.”

“I’m sure.”

“I hate you.”

Wash sighed, helmet in hand, as he walked toward the infirmary door. “I’m sure.”

**0000**

“ _ Do you have any idea what it’s like, to go to war with a guy, save his life, be saved by him, and then watch him turn into a monster? Like the ones we were fighting?” _

There was a solitary room in the depths of the ship that had once been part of a rec and exercise room for the massive ship’s crew. It was cleaved in half, shoved into the mountain with jagged metal and the internals of the ship hanging dangerously into the air. It was quiet and damp and dark.

“ _ We were in the frontlines. Body fodder. Right into enemy territory to clear it. You’d think they’d send in one of their super soldier batches, but no, ordinary men are a dime a dozen, right? _ ”

Vanessa had found the room when they were scouting for supplies. There weren’t many pieces left to the weight equipment, but there was a hanging punching bag. It hung in the middle of the tilted room almost indignantly, like it had refused to be even slightly disturbed by the crash. 

“ _ Me and Sam--we were together in the same unit, twice. Boot camp and all. I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me, but it was war. Liking people doesn’t mean shit. You get used to the assholes around you, because those assholes are watching your back _ .” 

She wasn’t sure when it started, but she had found herself drifting to the abandoned room and that punching bag. She only intended to go there for the quiet, but in time, she came there to do what felt like the only thing that calmed her anymore: she took out her fists.

“ _ I didn’t see him change. I mean, I guess, sure, I was there. I saw it. I guess. But by the time we were the last ones standing, I hadn’t been looking for it. _ ”

Armor discarded, Vanessa felt isolated and safe, attacking the bag at a steady pace. Her hits were heavy and solid. She fell into a rhythm. The contact didn’t register in her brain. She went somewhere else, adrift, generally somewhere calm.

“ _ He got his head twisted up--thinking about himself like a soldier but only a soldier. He told me before he was from Arizona, but he never talked about it again when we were discharged. He put up a fight about giving in his armor. I thought it was just PTSD. _ ”

But now, Vanessa could feel the tension stiffening her spine and clenched fists beneath the tape. Her drifting thoughts were taking on water. 

“ _ Getting into the bounty hunting circle inevitably leads you to merc work. It was fine. I thought it was easy. I couldn’t sit still in a civilian place anyway. I liked the travel. The thrills. The money, too. I bought myself a ship and went out looking for even more dangerous work _ .”

She had heard this story. It was a piecemeal thing that he had given her over the years. Here and there, filling in the gaps of a life Vanessa now questioned ever happened.

“ _ But the thing is--I wasn’t looking behind me. I didn’t see him coming. One day, you’re minding your own business on a job, and then the next, there’s a lunatic trying to murder you without even saying a damn thing _ .”

She remembered the sob story--or the shrugged off story that Felix had fed her and everyone else. That Locus was a rival, an ex-friend, a monster. Vanessa had believed in it, because she had believed in the devastation Locus had caused on behalf of the Feds. Or what she had assumed was for the Feds. It had been so easy to believe it.

“ _ I got out--it was a stupid job anyway--somehow. I knew it was him, behind the armor. He had painted it green. I knew it was him. I knew how he moved. I just didn’t know why. _ ”

In the aftermath of his betrayal, Vanessa had only wondered once if any of it were true. If he had been from Earth, if he had become a merc for the money, if Locus and he were one in the same or if one were truly worse than the other. Only once did she wonder, because any more than that 

“ _ But then, I hear a distress call. Some backwater world in some civil conflict. All I heard was alien tech and I was sold. I needed the cash, fast, after ditching the job. An old man in charge of the rebels offers me some shiny gear. It seemed simple. I always liked fighting for the underdog, you know? _ ”

She remembered. She remembered Felix, some charmingly idiotic man, showing up in their midst. She didn’t remember his arrival--it was before she was old enough to serve in any real capacity--but she remembered the first time she saw him. She remembered how he was always there, with ammo and guns and his unnatural form of luck that seemed to be the only thing keeping them alive on some of their worst days.

“ _ And it was easy. For almost a year. We almost had them--the Feds. They had most of the military in their command, but they weren’t exactly militarized before. They were miners. Your miners _ .”

Her father and mother had been miners. Their parents, too. Chorus was a rocky, mountainous world that didn’t lend itself to agriculture much. Before the war, the streams of trade had been good. Mining had been the only way to really make it in the universe. 

“ _ But then, but then, the tide shifts. There’s someone new on the Feds side. All the kids coming in from the battle zones come tell me that they’ve hired a merc, too. I laughed it off. I thought it would be more fun like this. I was excited. _ ”

Vanessa hit the bag so hard, it flew up too high and the chain yanked back down with a horrendous clang. 

“ _ He killed the first leader of the New Republic, who was one of the few of his breed to be stupid enough to demand to be at the front lines. Watched it from a distance. Clean shot, but a difficult one. I thought to myself, nah. The universe is too big. It’s too damn big. _ ”

The funeral for General Blume had been brief, grim, with few tears. Vanessa didn’t remember why no one really cried. It had been Blume to start the revolution to begin with. A miner’s son who fought to make things better for his children. He could have been any one of them.

“ _ Then, Mahala, who was the only one to attempt a damn treaty, gets shot and then a grenade in his face. In mine, too. It hadn’t even fucking occurred to me that the bastard was there, cloaked. I should have known it. I should have felt it. Like when someone in a movie think there’s a ghost in the room. But I didn’t feel it at all _ .”

Mahala, they cried for. Vanessa knew it wasn’t because they liked him better. It had been the loss of the treaty, too, that they had wept for.

“ _ Then Higgs. Poor guy thinks that he’s doing it as a last resort, trying to get help himself. Didn’t even get to the stratosphere and a bomb goes off. That crowd was so fucking silent. Not a fucking peep. They just watched it. Like someone just froze them there and left them to rot. _ ”

Vanessa remembered. She remembered standing with Higgs’ wife, who was training to be a medic in a time when they didn’t have real doctors anymore, as they watched the shuttle explode in mid-air.

“ _ Of course I knew it was him by then. I had seen him. The grenade had been the starting point of recognition. It had been insult to injury, because Mahala was already dead or dying from the gunshot. That grenade had been for me. I knew it was Locus. I knew it _ .”

She was hitting harder and faster. It felt like she had become mechanized. She didn’t even feel her hands touch the plastic.

“ _ He named himself after his armor. He told me that, when we were discharged. When I called him Ortez one last time, he nearly ripped my arm off. I guess I should have guessed then. What kind of lunatic names himself after his armor? _ ”

He had said that, once. The same thing. It was all the same story. Except for how it ended.

“ _ I’m the only one who knew him as Ortez. As Sam. I’m the last one. The rest of our squad is dead. Higgs was the one who told me the obvious. That Locus wasn’t here for money or the thrills or a purpose. He was there for me. For unfinished business _ .”

She wasn’t sure why, but Vanessa couldn’t stop herself from remembering the first time Felix had corrected her marksmanship. Made fun of her, knocking her knees a little from behind, before sliding up beside her to help adjust her aim. He helped her until she hit all the targets. He had complimented her progress.

“ _ Locus wants to be perfect. A perfect machine. He doesn’t think like a human being anymore. If you ripped him out of that armor, there’d be nothing left, I think. I don’t think there’s anything left of him inside it _ .”

That cocky smile was the only sign of a flawed man. A human man. Thought too much of himself, maybe, but Vanessa had always seen it as a facet of who Felix had been. He was there, with them, for them, and he didn’t have to be. He chose to come to them. 

Her greatest mistake was assuming that he had come to them for their sake.

“ _ I should have known _ .”

Vanessa should have known, too.

“ _ I should have fucking known _ .”

Her last jab left her with stinging knuckles and then the second caused something to drag on her right hand. She hissed and stood back, letting the beaten bag sway helplessly in the air as she raised her fist up into the dim light. It was bleeding all down her clenched fingers, where the skin had ripped open. The bandages had slipped at some point, leaving her flesh to take the damage.

She hadn’t even noticed she was breathing so heavily or that she was drenched with sweat. But she did notice the tall figure by the door, watching her. Vanessa knew they had been there awhile.

“You need to make a decision,” Carolina said, when the general turned to look at her.

There was something gentle about Carolina’s speech and posture, leaning against the doorway. Vanessa wasn’t used to being watched over. She did that for other people. Her people. 

Panting, Vanessa said nothing. She moved away, back toward her discarded armor, but she moved past it, hands on her hips. Her chest was burning, her hands stinging. 

She wanted to scream. Kick things. Break things. All sorts of ugly emotions boiled away inside her, demanding release, and there was no real way to let it out.

Vanessa had a feeling that if there was anyone who she could stand watching her have a meltdown, it would be Carolina. There was no judgment in the stare that followed her. Focusing on that was oddly calming.

She looked up, past the darkness.

“I know,” she said, answering the unspoken question.

There was an ache deep inside her. It was like when they had lost Mahala. Why was it that the loss of life was never as horrible as the loss of hope? She had learned that sometimes, they were one in the same, but losing the chance to end the war had been devastating.

Losing one of the few constants, one of the few bright spots they had left in their broken world, had been just as damning.

Carolina watched her quietly before nodding her head once.

“Wash is up,” she said.

Vanessa wished she had half that amount of resolve. To be able to just roll with the punches instead of stumbling every five feet. She took a deep, steadying breath.

“Good,” she said. “I’ve made up my mind.”

Carolina waited and listened as Vanessa told her.

**0000**

He felt like absolute crap, but he ate the meal in front of him anyway, because he was starving. Cold rations were normal fare, anyway. It reminded him of home, Felix thought darkly. 

Breakfast was a meager meal of oatmeal, an apple, and water. He would have thought they were giving him a prisoner’s diet, until he saw Smith--his jailer that morning--eating the same thing. They must have been struggling with rations again. 

“Hey,” Felix said, breaking the tense silence of the cell, “if everyone is playing nice now, why’re the meals so plain? Armonia not have decent supplies after all?”

He was genuinely only curious. Plus the quiet was getting to his nerves again. His question caught Smith by surprise. The lieutenant flinched.

“Armonia is gone,” he said, averting his gaze. 

Felix paused. “What do you mean...gone?”

Smith had frozen, like he had misspoken, and his expression betrayed his normally reserved front. Felix waited, slowly placing his glass down.

“Andersmith,” he said, slowly, “what happened to Armonia?”

The news kind of knocked the second wind out of him. They  _ nuked _ themselves? Had Doyle been _that_ insane? Smith made it sound like it had been a last resort--and if it had been true that both the other Felix and Locus had been working with as many mercenaries as Tucker had told him they had, it might have very well been a last ditch effort. But Christ, it was _gone_?

He hadn’t known Doyle. They said he was a calculating man, a cold one. Tucker said he was a pushover and was afraid of his own shadow. Neither impression anticipated self-sacrifice.

But Armonia was gone. Part of Felix was angry. They had spent so much blood and time on reclaiming it and they just blow it up? What the hell was the point of that? 

The image of nuclear fallout killed his appetite. He stared at his water glass and felt the ever-present crushing sense of the need to run push down on him from all sides. Even if the war had ended here, this Chorus was somehow even worse than the one he had left behind.

“Hey,” he began, looking over at Smith.

He stopped when he realized someone else was standing at the door. Fidgeting and not wearing his helmet, Tucker looked like he was waiting for permission to enter. Felix blinked.

“Tucker,” he said, feeling cautious. The last time he had seen Tucker was about six hours ago. The younger man had run at Dr. Grey’s gentle order to let her work on Felix. 

“Felix,” Tucker said. He scratched his chin. “Uh. How are you feeling?”

Felix raised his eyebrow. He was glad Tucker wasn’t going to make a joke out of the panic attack or anything, but he wasn’t exactly pleased with the captain’s recent shitty attitude toward him. There was an apology buried somewhere in the question and Felix didn’t want any of it.

“Like shit,” Felix said, coolly. He pushed his plate aside on the cot. “So, what, you don’t hate me anymore?”

Instantly, Tucker’s face scrunched up. “Look, man, this is weird.”

“Tell me about it,” Felix deadpanned. “At least you don’t have former allies trying to kill you.”

Tucker scowled. “I still don’t totally believe you.” 

Sighing, Felix looked away. Smith looked like he just wanted to leave. Felix did too. He didn’t have the patience for this--

“But I guess you’re right about Locus,” Tucker said abruptly.

Felix did his best not to react to that.

“What about him?” he asked, looking back at the other man.

“That you aren’t his friend,” Tucker said, awkward and uncomfortable. To his credit, he continued. “He  _ did _ leave the other Felix to die, so maybe he doesn’t like you anymore anyway. And if you are telling the truth, I kinda understand why you hate him.”

Felix couldn’t imagine a world where Locus had ever been intent on keeping him alive. Sam might have. He had. But Locus? Never.

Spilling his guts to Vanessa and Carolina last night had left him winded, physically and mentally. He couldn’t think about a different world than the one he had lived in for nearly five years. He might not have been able to convince them he wasn’t their evil Felix, but he could damn well try to make them believe Locus was not a friend to him, or vice versa.

Tucker was still watching him, that awkward concern slowly worming its way back into his expression. Felix watched him back.

“Thanks,” he said, without thinking.

Tucker blinked. “For what?”

“Being a distraction,” Felix said. He smirked as Tucker stared at him in confusion for a second.

“What are--hey! I was totally not a distraction! I was the rescue!” Tucker exclaimed. “I swooped in swinging, bow chicka bow--!”

“Tucker, it is too damn early for this,” a woman said, somewhere behind him in the hall.

Tucker jumped back, revealing the profile of Vanessa Kimball. Felix forced himself not to curl back into the wall. Looking at her--watching her look at him with contempt--was almost as nauseating as dealing with Locus.

With her were the two ex-Freelancers. Washington was only slightly familiar, since the man was dead as far as Felix had known last week. The man looked incredibly run down; he had vaguely remembered Tucker saying Washington had been injured in the fight. Carolina was an unknown to him. She was powerful and deadly, and those were the only two things Felix decided he needed to know.

Vanessa moved past Tucker and curtly dismissed Smith, who leapt up with a salute and grabbed the breakfast trays on the way out. Felix kept his eyes on Vanessa, who stared back. She looked almost as exhausted and worn out as Felix felt. He wondered if their red-rimmed eyes matched.

There was only silence in the room for a beat after the lieutenant left. Tucker kept glancing anxiously at Washington, but neither ex-Freelancer did anything but move to the sides and observe Vanessa and Felix.

“How are you feeling?” Vanessa asked, ending the silence.

It was not asked out of concern. It was mainly a question of ability; she had seen him before and had to have known he wasn’t up for questions last night. She had decided his reprieve was over, then. Felix felt his lip curl slightly and he forced it down; he could be bitter later.

“We need to talk,” he said, ignoring the question. He sat up and properly faced them on the edge of the cot.

Vanessa’s cold mask didn’t shift in the least.

“About?” she prompted.

“Locus,” Felix said. “And whatever crap he has planned with this Hargrove guy.”

Carolina, Washington, and Vanessa glanced at each other. Tucker merely looked confused.

“It’s possible that Locus is no longer working with Hargrove,” Carolina said, eyes going back to him.

“You figure?” Felix asked, arching an eyebrow.

Washington frowned. “You don’t believe it.”

“I’m learning what’s normal as I go here, remember?” Felix asked, shrugging. He leaned against the wall. “He said something about codes. Stopping Hargrove.” He frowned. “I don’t know any codes, but I guess I don’t know anything anymore, do I?”

There was an awful beat of silence. Felix thought it was just about him denying knowledge of this other Felix, but then he noticed Carolina and Washington exchanging grim frowns.

“When he attacked me and Epsilon, Locus did confirm he wasn’t aware that Felix had reappeared, alive or dead,” Washington suddenly said. He hesitated. “He also mentioned codes. Nuclear bombs that Hargrove had brought in. Locus and Felix both had codes to disarm them.”

Felix went cold from head to toe.  _ Fuck _ . 

“Could that be a bluff?” Vanessa asked, her attention fully on Wash now. Her voice was harder. Felix could see her panic under the surface. He felt a little bit of that himself.

“I sincerely doubt it,” Washington said, shaking his head. “He came all that way to tell one of us. He probably came to confirm Felix was alive, too. To get the other codes.”

Felix didn’t know any goddamn codes. Certainly none for warheads. 

“Did he say where they were?” Tucker asked, anxious.

“No,” Wash said. “He said we needed to start looking for them.”

“They could be anywhere!” Vanessa snapped. She grasped her head, like trying to keep a lid on the panic.

“We don’t have a choice,” Carolina said. “We’ll start sending out scouts. They’d have put them in places to cause remote harm to our forces, so they have to be close to camps, new or old.”

“Wouldn’t that limit our resources here?” Wash asked.

Vanessa suddenly lashed out, kicking Smith’s empty chair into the wall, sending it clattering. “Damn it!”

Felix watched them all, feeling increasingly disconnected. What kind of crazy people were they dealing with if there were nukes all over the place? How messed up was Hargrove?

And Locus… having those codes? Felix gripped the edge of the cot until his knuckles went white. This place was infinitely worse than the one he had left behind.

Suddenly, Tucker turned and moved closer to him. The younger captain’s expression was pained.

“Locus helped us bring the other-you down,” he said. “You know that, right?”

Felix hesitated. “I know that. He...betrayed the other me. Right?”

“Sorta,” Tucker said, without correcting him about the ‘other-me’ comment. “From what we gathered, he got sick of your shit and said he was done fighting with you.” He paused. “He did toss you a gun, though.”

Felix swallowed. “And then you killed me.”

Tucker hesitated. “Well, yeah.”

That searching in Tucker’s eyes--it was constant and nervous, the way his eyes darted all over Felix’s face, on his scar especially. Felix normally would have made a joke about finally getting the captain to shut up, but he just didn’t feel like it.

He considered their options. His options.

“I’m not that Felix,” he said, slowly.

He unclenched his fists. He lifted his head and saw Vanessa just watching him. She was practically vibrating with emotion. Mostly anger. Like when the Feds killed some of their own. Like when she felt like she had failed her people somehow. 

Felix wasn’t sure if it was entirely directed at him. At that point, he didn’t blame her reaction to learning just how screwed they were.

“Obviously not,” Washington suddenly said. 

Vanessa’s expression didn’t change. Carolina was as impassive as ever. Tucker looked like he wanted to say something, but he thankfully didn’t. Felix kept his eyes on Vanessa.

“Locus wanted me to help him with those codes,” he said. “Are you against calling him?”

Carolina didn’t even hesitate. “To see what his angle is?”

“Yeah,” Felix said, torn between dreading his decision and feeling elated at the chance to find out just what the hell was going on.

He understood then--finally--that he had at least managed to get them all to consider his truthfulness. He understood then that the position they were in didn’t allow for more mistakes, however. He was bitter and angry, but he supposed he couldn’t blame their suspicion. He would have been just the same.

But they weren’t debating his honesty that time. They were considering how to survive a madman.

“At this point,” Washington said, looking between his friends, “I honestly don’t know what more damage could happen.”

Maybe it was desperation. Maybe it was a crack in her resolve. But against Felix’s own bet with himself, Vanessa got him to the communications center. Washington brought up the last channel he had spoken with Locus on. 

“Kimball to Locus,” Vanessa said, her voice crisp over the line. “If you are on this channel, respond.”

They all stood, waiting and tense, as silence reigned in the communications office. Felix didn’t realize he was shivering until he tried to rub the goosebumps off his forearm. 

Then, finally:

“ _ Locus _ .”

No confusion. No fear. Just a voice. Felix felt his mouth go dry.

Vanessa turned, sending Felix a controlled look as she held out the mic. Felix moved to take it, feeling numb. 

That voice. It resonated in his head, getting louder in repetition. Just hearing it made him so goddamn angry.

Fist clenching over the mic, Felix raised it to his lips.

“Hey,  _ partner _ ,” he said, biting each word out past a forced grin. “This is Felix. The other one. The  _ real _ one. I figured that you wanted to talk.”

\----

**End Chapter 6**

\----

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/Ns:  
> -Just as a heads up, right now I’m off from school for the summer, but it’ll be starting up again at the end of August, so updates might become even more sporadic again. I’m gonna try my best to finish this by the end of Fall (at this point, my outline is painfully vague about where it’s going to go), but your patience is much appreciated!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live! Seriously, thank you all so much for the feedback and kudos! I’m still floored that so many of you are enjoying this and I hope I can get the story out to you ASAP. 
> 
> My goal is to speed through chapters during winter break and then have a buffer to post on a schedule. The story won’t be too long (compared to some of my other stuff haha…), maybe about ten more chapters. We’ll see! For now, I wanted to get at least one more chapter out to you before the end of the year. Not sure when the next will come, but likely soon!
> 
> \---  
> disclaimer: red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
> warnings: major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, future AI drama, weapons of mass destruction  
> \---

 

His knee still hurt, but his shoulder ached even more. Felix always was a lucky shot, though maybe it hadn’t been so lucky for either of them.

The meeting could have been a trap. That had immediately crossed Locus’ mind when he answered his com-link, before even hearing the voice on the other end. If Washington had taken him seriously about the warheads, then they would assume they could force him to help--regardless of the fact he was already doing just that without them.

He had not been expecting to hear Felix's voice, however, sharp and revealing a tremor of emotion underneath the clipped words. The words of a dead man, a man who haunted Locus beyond the limits of death.

“You want to stop this Hargrove guy? Fine. But you do it on Chorus’ terms,” Felix had said.

Locus wanted to ask him a hundred things--how he had survived, why he had refused to escape with him, why he was speaking in such removed ways about Hargrove or his role in the attacks--but he held his tongue. He could feel the blistering pain of his shoulder still, even after treating the injury, and knew that Felix, if he was playing a game, was too far gone down his story to break character now. That was the easiest answer, anyway.

“Fine,” he had told them, because he knew Kimball and the others were listening. “Where?”

They had argued about where, as Locus was not going to walk back into hostile territory without a good reason. He couldn’t help them if he was locked up and he knew that no amount of logic could sway Vanessa Kimball’s anger.

They agreed to meet at the communications tower, which was far enough away from both of their locations that it was neutral territory. Locus knew they would bring more men and more weapons, but he knew they wouldn't kill him. Not yet, anyway. He could work with that.

He arrived first, waiting in the shadows of the tower, only twitching when he finally heard the convoy approach. Two Warthogs, meaning a limited crowd. Perhaps it was to save face, Locus thought. Kimball wouldn't want to alert her people to the fact she was actually giving one of their chief enemies the chance to parlay. There would have been a mutiny.

He was only slightly surprised to see Felix among them for that reason alone. He watched as his partner climbed down gingerly, wearing handcuffs and no armor, and stood stiffly next to everyone else. His hair was shorter, almost military grade, Locus noted. That wasn't the only thing different, of course. The differences stood out even more now, even at that distance.

Felix was favoring his left side and Locus knew it wasn't from his punch yesterday, since the injury seemed to be higher up and to the side. There was an aura of a small, wounded animal radiating from him, like Felix might bolt or lash out if someone got too close. That was familiar, at least. 

With his viewfinder, Locus could see the reddened eyes and the gaunt expression--also familiar, but he hadn't seen that in years. Felix had grown so confident in his own abilities that he rarely became anxious over missions. It made Locus think of their time with Siris and when they had been so young--literally and emotionally, concerning their expectations of mercenary work. 

But even with all the similarities, just looking at him now revealed everything he needed to know that this wasn't Felix. They had done something to him, but Locus didn't have a clue what or how. The scar was one thing, but there were far more alarming things. The way Felix had reacted to him made it clear that his former partner didn't have any trust in him, but not in the homicidal rage that he had expected from the partner he had abandoned. The idea had twisted Locus' gut; he had never considered abandoning Felix before that day. In hindsight, he wasn't sure he could have repeated the act any other time. It was still baffling that Felix hadn't immediately lashed  out, just because of that, so it was all the more evidence something was wrong with Felix's head.

He thought about Grey and all of her machinations. She could have tortured him. Turned his mind inside out. Locus wasn't sure that could be done in less than a week, but he had long since stopped doubting anything his former enemies were capable of doing. The idea that Felix could have been brainwashed, however, seemed impossible for anyone. Felix was far too complex to be able to manipulate that quickly.

He uncloaked and walked over to the ramp, letting them come to him. Washington and Carolina led, with Tucker and Sarge not far behind. Kimball walked behind Felix, her gun raised but her attention was solely on Locus.

“I’m surprised you actually came,” Carolina said, her tone breezy.

“I have not lied to you. The warheads exist,” Locus said. He was too tired to be annoyed by the distrust. It only occurred to him then that he hadn't really slept in two days.

“We know. We sent a squad out to the location you gave us to confirm,” Washington said, also strangely at ease. He moved off to the side, not reacting when Locus’ visor followed him. “They’re real.”

"What remains to be proven real are these codes of yours," Carolina added.

"I sent you my half," Locus said. It had been a strong show of trust his part, especially since he was paranoid about Hargrove somehow changing the codes if he caught wind of Locus' betrayal. "But it is useless without Felix's half of the codes."

A blue light flashed, revealing the Freelancer AI, Epsilon, over by the two Freelancers. "Too bad your old buddy doesn't seem to have his half anymore."

"We're not  _ buddies _ ," Felix hissed. He had moved over near Tucker, following Kimball's less than subtle shove, but he kept his eyes on Locus like he would a snake in the grass. "I don't have any stupid codes!"

"What happened to your face?" Locus asked, capturing all of their attentions again. Felix bristled, saying nothing. If he could have gone paler, Locus thought, he would have.

"That's kinda rude," Sarge said, humming.

"Forget about his stupid face," Tucker said, turning back to Locus. "Look, dude, I want to believe you're actually trying to stop Hargrove."

"Really?" Washington asked.

“I mean, yeah. Better he help than make it worse.”

"We don't know if he won't make it worse," Kimball said. 

"If Hargrove sets off those bombs, I will die too," Locus said, irritated now. He kept perfectly still, however, knowing that the others were on hair-triggers. "I have everything to gain by helping you, while I will lose what little I have left by betraying you."

His freedom was unlikely, but his life was an obvious fact they couldn't have ignored. They were less likely to realize how much he needed to do this, whether he lived or died, however. He felt compelled to act, like something inside him was dragging his body faster than it could move. 

"You could just be fishing to get Felix back, so you can set the bombs off on your way out," Tucker said.

"He's not  _ getting _ me back, I was never--" Felix shut up abruptly, when Kimball pressed her gun into his shoulder. He looked away, shoulders hunched.

"If that were true, this is the part where I would have ambushed you," Locus said. He dared to motion with his hand, at the open space around them. "You have the advantage right now."

"What exactly is your plan?" Carolina cut in, before Tucker could say anything else. "You want to stop Hargrove from setting off the bombs. Great. But he's got more than the nukes."

"You have help incoming, don't you?" Locus looked up. "Surely you can hold out for a little while longer."

"We don't know if we have help incoming, first off," Epsilon snapped. "And second, we're losing people every day, plus losing our weapons to defend against his ship. We're out of time to be found alive by whoever does head our way."

Locus scowled, though none of them could see it. "I can only assist directly this way. I can't respond directly to Hargrove just yet. He could switch the codes if he realizes I'm alive and helping you."

"That is a concern," Carolina drawled. "Funny how he hasn't suspected yet."

"He does seem more interested in blowing you to smithereens at this point," Locus deadpanned. Hargrove was truly acting like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum. Breaking his toys with his fists instead of just throwing them into the trash in one fell swoop. Maybe he just wanted to inflict pain.

"Fair," Sarge said, shrugging when Tucker and Epsilon both turned to him as if to send dirty looks. "Just sayin', man has a point. The bastard up there ain’t going to be worried about anything else at this point, you’d figure."

“All of this is irrelevant without the other codes,” Locus said, attention shifting back to Felix, who was staring out past Tucker’s shoulders, never once relaxing.

The way that Felix was avoiding his eyes made him doubt, just a little. He could see the tension radiating off of the shorter man. The strangest thing was that it wasn’t anger that was making Felix tense. Locus could see that it was fear.

Leaving Felix to die would have evoked anger, not fear. It didn’t make any sense.

“Felix--” he began, but the shorter man suddenly turned, glaring at him.

“Don’t even start with this  _ Felix _ shit,” he snapped. “What do you need to stop those bombs?”

Locus frowned, but answered. “They’re scattered across Chorus. We were going to plant them in case the worst scenario happened, which was simply if the war stopped on its own.”

“Yeah, well, things certainly have gotten worse for you,” Sarge said, chuckling.

“For Hargrove, they did.” Locus refused to take the bait. He nodded toward the left, back out toward the jungles of Chorus. “They’re not dangerous as long as they aren’t physically destroyed, which would be very difficult to do, or if I can re-lock them with new codes. Hargrove theoretically could activate them at a distance. My goal is to relock them with new codes to prevent that. Possibly to move them into hiding at a safe distance, if necessary, if your rescue is slow.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Felix asked.

“You have the other half of the code sequence.”

Felix tensed. It reminded Locus of a cat. It was entirely Felix, he thought.

“...no, I don’t,” Felix said, through gritted teeth.

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t  _ have  _ any codes.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t--!”

“Holy shit, let’s not descend into this kind of argument right now. I will literally try to shoot myself in the face,” Epsilon snapped, flaring brightly before settling back down. “Felix here either has amnesia or he’s a different Felix from, uh, a different dimension. I think the amnesia part makes more sense.”

Felix turned to glare at the AI. “I don’t have amnesia. I remember perfectly--”

“But the bottom line is,” Wash interrupted, “he doesn’t have the codes.”

All of them fell silent. Locus kept his eyes on Felix, whose agitation never faded. If he could have stomped off, he would have, most likely. Instead, they all just stood there, waiting to move or speak, but no one managed to find anything to say. Locus, for his part, was feeling adrift.

“Then we are going to have a problem,” he said, at great length.

“Great,” Wash said, throwing his arms up. “Fantastic.”

“Wait, why can’t  _ you _ hack them, Church?” Tucker asked, turning to the AI floating nearby.

Epsilon hesitated. “What?”

“He’s right. You can probably break the sequence easily enough,” Carolina said, speaking slowly as she too came to that conclusion. She glanced back over to Locus. “Having half of the encryption sequence is likely better than nothing to get you started, right?”

They all looked back at the AI, who seemed to be genuinely surprised at the attention. He flickered.

“Sure,” he said, not entirely confident sounding at first. He recovered quickly, sounding more assured. “Uh. I can do that.”

“Epsilon--,” Washington began.

“No, no, I can do it,” Epsilon said, still too quickly. “Wash, are you feeling up to this?”

Washington paused. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. Suspicion rang in his tone.

“Great, let’s get moving with this field trip,” Epsilon said, as if it had been his plan to start with. He pointed over at Felix and then Locus. “Saddle up, Felix. You too, Benedict Arnold.”

“Wait, is it okay if I go?” Felix asked, startled, his handcuffs rattling from the effort.

He turned, to look at Kimball, wide-eyed and wearing an expression of surprise that Locus hadn’t seen Felix wear in years. It was open and sincere and it made Locus stop, staring at Felix.

For the first time, Locus didn’t recognize him. The thought stilled him. 

Kimball, for her part, was even tenser than Felix was. She clenched her fists at her side; Locus could see her anger. Frustration, more like it. She was either frustrated with Felix’s question or her answer to it.

“We will shoot you if you betray us again,” she said, the words biting. 

“There was never an  _ again _ , Vanessa,” Felix said, scowling. He tossed his head; Locus could see the clenched jaw. “And fair enough.” 

“Come on, Epsilon. Let’s go,” Carolina said, turning to the hologram.

“Right.” The AI clapped his translucent hands together. “Sure. Let’s go, Wash.”

There was a pause, strictly between the Freelancers and the AI. Tucker hesitated, as did Kimball, but only the AI seemed to be surprised by the unmoving Freelancers.

“What?” Carolina asked, staring at the AI. “Why with Wash?”

Epsilon visibly stilled. “What--what’s wrong with staying here?” he asked, a bit too fast. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Carolina crossed her arms, the movements as slow as her voice. “Okay, um, what’s wrong with you?”

Washington sighed--heavily.

“Just leave it,” he said, sounding exhausted. “We’ll explain later.”

“You will,” Carolina said, her focus still on the AI, who almost seemed sheepish as he vanished from sight.

Locus couldn’t have cared less about the AI or the Freelancers, particularly when it had nothing to do with the mission. He waited for them to move, watching Washington’s shoulders disappear down the ramp, with the two simulation soldiers following him (and arguing as they went). He glanced to the side and saw Felix had started to follow after Kimball.

“Felix,” Locus began.

Felix all but jumped away from him. He edged further around Carolina's shoulder, though she did nothing to show she'd protect him from anything. She instead seemed to observe them both with vague curiosity.

“Stay away from me,” Felix said, bloodshot eyes glaring up at him.

Locus felt a twinge of something--annoyance, probably--inside him. “You don’t remember who I am?”

He hadn’t believed the amnesia story at first, but now… the look Felix was giving him told a lot. Felix was a good actor, but Locus had thought he had mastered seeing through Felix’s covers. The fear seemed genuine, and while that could make sense since Locus had abandoned him, it wasn’t the kind of fear he would have expected. None of it made sense. The defenses, the excuses-- 

“I remember plenty,” Felix snapped. His one eye twitched, a tic Locus remembered only from their days before entering the mercenary sphere. Felix had cut most of his tells out once he took their new career seriously. A con man had to have minimal facial cues. “I’m not--the Felix that you knew, okay? Apparently he’s dead. I'm not him.”

Locus stared at him. The face was the same, aside from the scar. Definitely not dead. But definitely still Felix.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, because honestly, he had nothing else to say to that.

“So is becoming a living weapon, but you managed that just fine,” Felix snarled. He went around Carolina's back, intent on following Washington it seemed. “I’m not your partner and I never was. Piss off.”

Watching him leave, Locus didn’t know what else to say to that. Felix was delusional. Or his near-death had damaged his mind somehow. He could believe it, though he had never heard of something that extreme, as to the victim somehow imagining a whole other set of facts for his life. It seemed impossible.

The mind, he had learned long ago, was a fickle thing, however. 

Carolina hadn’t moved. Locus knew she was waiting for him leave as well, to watch him for sabotage most likely. He looked back at her.

“You found him like that?” he asked.

Carolina had no qualms about revealing anything, it seemed. “He reached out to the New Republic and spouted all of that to us, too. You two are mortal enemies, apparently. He's not a murdering psychopath. He genuinely was working for the New Republic.” Her visor tilted, as if she was glancing at him from the side. “You know. Convenient story.”

Locus stared at her. “You don't believe him.” Locus certainly didn’t.

“I don’t know what I believe yet,” Carolina said. “If anything, he might genuinely have amnesia.” She paused. “Though I’ve never heard of amnesia causing years-old facial scars like that.”

“Where would he have come from?” Locus asked, still more bewildered by the fact any of them were considering that to be the truth. That somehow Felix was… another Felix.

“We’ve got alien death temples everywhere. Stranger things have happened,” Carolina said, sighing gustily. She motioned for him to go down the ramp. “It doesn’t change things. If he can help, we’ll use him.”

Locus didn’t move. He stared down the ramp and even though he couldn’t see Felix any longer, he could hear him arguing with Tucker. 

He hadn’t expected to hear Felix’s voice again. It was grating. Familiar. All at once, it’s irritating presence made him feel ill.

“If he’s not the Felix we knew, then he isn’t guilty of any crime,” he said, blurting it out before he could stop himself.

He didn’t know why it bothered him, because Felix was either mentally ill or lying, but even if Felix had amnesia, could he really be blamed for what he had done? Chorus would not let him or Locus leave the planet alive. He knew that much. But wouldn’t Felix’s condition change the scope of it?

Carolina tilted her head.

“You really don’t expect it to be that easy, do you?” she asked.

There was no malice in her tone, but Locus felt something cold go up his spine. The clawed hands of dread. A steep realization soaked in apprehension.

He said nothing, instead walking down the ramp, as if the feeling wasn’t there and her words hadn’t bothered him. They shouldn’t have bothered him. 

It did anyway.

**0000**

They hadn’t even given him any armor. He was practically naked out there in his under-armor suit, a sitting duck for any of their enemies--whoever the fuck their enemies were at that point--and no one seemed to care. It fucking figured, Felix thought bitterly.

It was already mid-afternoon and Chorus was ridiculously humid that time of year. Felix could feel sweat on his neck, making his hair stick uncomfortably to his skin. The others were arguing about how to get to the nearest bomb location--there were twenty locations overall, but some were in mountainous areas that would be difficult to travel to quickly. This one was just shy of the blast zone of where the capital had been. Felix shuddered. He couldn't believe they had nuked themselves just to spite Locus and--the other him. It was such a waste. 

He kept his eyes out on the jungle. He still wasn't entirely sure about who Hargrove was, but he knew the bastard had too many advantages. Not having a gun to defend himself was going to drive him crazy.

Someone snapped on a branch behind him and he spun around, heart pounding, thinking it was Locus again. It wasn't. Tucker had stopped at the edge of the jeep. The teal simulation soldier froze at the same time as Tucker, before sheepishly reaching up to grasp the back of his helmet. 

“Hey,” he began.

Felix didn't have the patience for the awkward uncertainty, not then. He spotted Locus all the way over where the Freelancers were, but his nerves were still rattled enough that the distance wasn't enough. “What?” he demanded.

“You need to go back to Grey?” Tucker asked.

“Why would I need to go back to that lunatic?” Felix asked, bewildered.

“You look like shit, dude.”

“Thanks, asshole,” Felix said, rolling his eyes. He knew his appearance must have been horrendous at that point. He didn't need the reminder. “I’ll have you know that even when I’m this exhausted, I still look better than you.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Tucker said, crossing his arms. “Seriously, you look like crap. If you need a doctor--”

“I’m fine,” Felix said, irritation only increasing. He stepped up to sit in the back seat of the jeep. “Jesus. Stop acting like you care when you clearly don’t.”

“I don’t care!” Tucker shouted. His shoulders went down, like he was wincing, and he lowered his voice. “I’m just trying to be a decent person. Shit.”

Felix was not in the mood to play caretaker to that idiot. He had done it for months, babying the simulation soldiers in the middle of a civil war, and that he had done effectively for free, though mostly against his will. It wasn’t like he could tell Tucker to fuck off--they were all trapped there, on that planet, surrounded by people trying to kill them. He had needed the simulation soldier to keep it together, for the rest of their meager squad. 

Sitting there, dwarfed by the idiot in teal thanks to his armor, Felix wanted to tell him to fuck off. 

But they were still stuck. Surrounded by people trying to kill them. It wasn’t fair. It was genuinely fucked up beyond measure.

“Sorry,” he said, the words barely above a mutter. 

Tucker froze. “I’m sorry, did you just apologize?”

“Shut up, idiot,” Felix said, shooting him another glare. “I’m just tired. Haven’t gotten any sleep. You’re pissing me off, so just leave me alone and worry about the mission.”

The chance of actually being able to stop the bombs was slim. Felix knew just from his own gut instinct that it likely wouldn’t work. No matter how skilled their allies were or not, fighting a madman with a nuclear stockpile wasn’t something they just won. 

Tucker fidgeted.  “Are you scared of him?”

Felix didn’t look at him. He drummed his fingers on his knees. He wasn’t talking about Hargrove.

“Aren’t you?” he asked. “Guy’s a fucking lunatic. Totally unhinged. Not somebody I want to work with and definitely not someone I trust to actually keep me alive.”

“You really were partners, you know. I don’t think he’s going to try to kill you,” Tucker said. “I mean, he did leave you to die. I guess that’s almost as bad as trying to kill you.”

“That never happened,” Felix said, scowling. “Not to me.”

“It was the other you,” Tucker said, knowingly. It wasn’t entirely mocking.

“Yeah, the  _ other _ me. You’re learning,” Felix drawled.

Tucker moved over to lean against the jeep. “Okay, bear with me, but what if you hit your head and it’s really the same you, and you only lost your memories? Or they just got scrambled?”

Felix motioned at his face, the cuffs clinking. “Don’t I look different or something? Everyone’s so damn focused on my face.”

“Yeah, you didn’t have a scar before,” Tucker said, with surprising casualness. “That is weird.”

Felix would have thrown his arms up completely if he could. “ _ Tell _ me about it!”

Both fell silent. Felix could hear the AI snapping something to Carolina and Washington-- _ great, a broken AI is just what we need _ \--and knew they had to get moving soon. He stole a glance at Locus, who was as impassive and unreadable as he always was. A fucking spectre of death, Felix thought.

“We gotta find those nukes, Tucker,” he said, feeling heavier with each passing moment. “Even if you all want to throw me in jail for things I didn’t do, I don’t want to die because some old bastard is throwing a temper tantrum.”

Tucker scoffed. “Yo, me neither, but this is going to be really weird working with either of you.”

Felix looked at some point over in the jungle, not wanting to stare at blank visors anymore. “I don’t even know if I can help. I seriously don’t remember any damn codes.”

“Maybe it’ll come back to you once we get there.”

“Doubtful.”

“Were we friends?” Tucker suddenly asked.

“What?” Felix asked, turning in confusion. 

Tucker reached up and took off his helmet, his dreads falling down in disarray. He was wearing a tight frown as he stared at the merc. “In your world, were we friends still?”

The guy looked like the Tucker that Felix had last seen weeks ago. Maybe less hardened. Still soft around the edges, like the guy who had tumbled to Chorus in a broken ship, and not the man who had been forced to grow up when all his friends had been dropping left and right. The earnest seriousness on Tucker’s face now was barely a fraction as grim as the Tucker that Felix knew.

It sort of weirded him out. 

“Yeah.” Felix shrugged. “I guess. You’re as annoying now as you were then, but you eventually figured out how to take commands, so there’s that.”

Tucker smirked. “Hey, me not taking your commands led us to expose your evil plots, so kudos to me.”

Felix shook his head and went to turn around in his seat, but something stopped him.

“We were friends here?” he asked, the words awkward in his mouth. He felt like he was suddenly back in primary school. More degrading things had happened to him, of course, specifically on Chorus.

“Yeah. Once.” Tucker scowled. “Then you tried to kill us all. Kinda sucked.”

Something in his stomach clenched. Felix glared.

“That wasn’t me,” he said.

“Maybe,” Tucker said, shrugging. “But it’s kinda hard, dude.”

“I bet,” Felix bit out. It really was like speaking to a brick wall sometimes.

Tucker hesitated. “But I guess it’s the same for you and him, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Looking at you, I want to punch you in the face and then run away. You were a royal dick, and you got a lot of good people killed, so you were an evil dick, too. Looking at you makes me remember all that,” Tucker said, his frown deepening. “But if you’re not faking it, then looking at him must make you feel the same way.”

That sounded so goddamn pathetic. Felix wanted to tell him to shut up, that it wasn’t like he was genuinely scared. He had survived Locus’ insanity for a long time at that point; he knew how to endure it. 

He knew how to endure it at long range, he realized. Up close was different. Up close was too close. His skin crawled every time the psycho seemed to stare at him, even if it didn’t look like he was. It was like a sixth sense. Prey sensing predator. This Locus was remarkably human compared to the one he was used to, however. The one he left behind was too still, like a wound up mechanical doll that was spring-loaded. This one at least seemed to breathe.

“I guess,” he finally said. That was all he could really muster. He wasn’t prey to anybody. Locus was just a fucking asshole.

“Just don’t do anything stupid and we’ll keep him away from you,” Tucker said. He stood up a little straighter. “If you two try to team up--”

Felix scoffed. “I won’t. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

Tucker nodded, abruptly good-natured again, totally at ease. It was a far cry from how he had been when Felix was alone in that interrogation cell. “Good. Then let’s stop Hargrove from blowing up the planet.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Felix said, sighing. Yeah, they were totally going to die.

Finally, the grown-ups decided to join them. Carolina was a walking enigma, never wearing her emotions in her body language, but Washington seemed flustered. Felix tried to remember what he had experienced with the Freelancer, before he had been captured by the Feds and was killed. The memories were hazy, since so much had happened since then. He wasn’t sure yet if an antsy Washington was good or bad for his situation.

“I need armor,” he said, as soon as the Freelancers got close.

Washington climbed up behind him, on the turret. “We'll get you some basic armor.”

Felix made a face. “Ugh. I hate New Republic armor. It's barely worth the effort putting it on."

“It'll stop a bullet.”

“No, it wouldn’t," Felix said, having seen men and women dropping like flies because their gear was shit. “Where’s mine?”

“You're more brain damaged than I thought if you think you're getting your armor back,” Carolina said, from the driver's seat. Felix made a face at her back.

“Then why the hell am I here? You’re really expecting I'll just remember some numbers that I've never seen before?” he asked. He sulked back into the seat. “I swear to God, if I get killed because of some evil clone bullshit and because you won’t give me back my armor, I’m going to be pissed. This is so stupid.”

“Yeah, well, it’s what we have to deal with,” Washington said, and Felix could hear the eye roll in his voice. The gray-tinted Freelancer turned over to Locus, who had gone over to the other Warthog. “Both of you just behave and we won't have to shoot you before we get there.”

“You fucking behave,” Felix muttered.

Locus just stared at Washington, then Felix, which sent a chill down Felix's spine, and then he climbed up into the back of the other Warthog, with Sarge driving and Kimball keeping her gun on Locus’ back the entire time.  _ Good _ , Felix thought.

As the jeeps headed out, Felix found himself letting go of a sharp breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. He had half-expected Locus to get in the jeep he was in. That would have been the worst case scenario. He honestly wasn't sure how he could have gotten out of that, other than throwing himself from the jeep and getting into the other one.

He sank down lower and found himself overwhelmed with exhaustion. He really hadn't slept at all in the last few days. If anyone was saying anything over the radio, he couldn't hear them. They plowed through the jungle and Felix had no choice but to hope they knew where they were going. 

Against his better judgement, he closed his eyes. If he fell asleep, he fell asleep. Amid every other disaster falling on him then, he figured the universe owed him a goddamn nap.

\----

**End _Chapter 7._**

\----

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, the visit to one of the nuke sites has some consequences for all members of this merry Anti-Apocalypse Squad.
> 
> Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it and happy holidays to all!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disabling a bomb is not as easy as finding a bomb.
> 
> \---  
> disclaimer: red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
> warnings: major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, future AI drama, weapons of mass destruction  
> \---

 

It was about forty minutes of driving before they got to the closest warhead. They were following Locus’ directions, which was hardly a comfort, but the trip was honestly dull compared to the last several days of Tucker's life. He was worried about what was going on back at Bravo, but there was nothing on the comms., or at least there hadn’t been in the last half hour. Jensen was in charge of keeping them up-to-date and nothing aside from Palomo getting his head stuck in a smaller cadet's helmet had gone wrong. 

They were way off the nearest road, but after breaking through some dense brush, they were at the edge of a clearing--or what amounted as one in the thick forests. 

“Let's move quick," Kimball said, her voice tense but not necessarily hushed. If they were going to be ambushed, being quiet wasn't going to exactly help them at that point. They were already too exposed for stealth.

Tucker kept close to the jeeps as the others regrouped and talked about the best way to go forward. There were boulders everywhere, like someone on top of the distant mountains had managed to throw them to that distance, among all the trees. The silence around them was unnerving. That whole section felt so abandoned, like no one had been there in years.

Turning, he kicked the side of the jeep. He needed noise.

“Wake up.”

Felix had flinched, but didn't leap up like Tucker had half-expected him too. “Shut up. I'm awake,” the brown haired man grumbled. He looked around blearily. “Here already?”

Tucker nodded and looked around as well. “Man, this is like an hour from camp. Wouldn't that make the bombs not dangerous?"

“It’s radiation too, dumbass. Plus the fact there is a closer bomb, nearer the mountains,” Epsilon said, from near Washington and Carolina.

Locus had moved closer, slow and deliberate in his pacing as always. “Most were positioned in locations we assumed would be near either Federal or New Republic bases, to cause the most damage.”

It was kinda freaky to have him handing out information like that, all nonchalant. It could have been a bunch of lies, but Tucker figured there wouldn't be a point to it now. It wasn't like they were headed back to camp where Locus and an ambush could have hurt anyone else. They were still in the same grouping; he was right about having the chance to surprise attack them back at the Comm. tower. It still didn't sit well with Tucker, and he knew if it felt odd to him, the others would be worse.

They all headed over to the warhead, which was placed in an innocent looking black box behind what had once been a study outpost, according to Kimball. The jungle had long since overgrown at the area and the outpost building, so the sleek box stood out. Locus crouched and dismantled the lid, revealing a dark gray missile inside. Carolina let out a low whistle.

Epsilon appeared above the box. “Okay, so how does this work?”

“We need to add the codes simultaneously,” Locus began.

“I already have your half, so let me do it,” Epsilon said, brushing the merc aside. He flickered, but still managed to speak with them as he apparently got to work examining the nuke from the inside. “Let’s see if I can shut this whole shitshow down and we can focus on just bringing that stupid ship down.”

Felix yawned and leaned against one of the rocks. “Judging by how that's been going, it might be faster just to throw the nukes at him instead.”

“There’s an idea,” Carolina said, tapping finger to her chin. 

Kimball sounded aghast. “No. Not again.”

Tucker almost laughed--almost--because in the times before Chorus, that might have been something to laugh at. Their horrible luck. Or maybe their really shitty brand of good luck. Now, he felt like if he laughed, he would have thrown up.

Kimball glanced at him, as if she knew, and she took him by his arm off to the side. Tucker didn’t resist, though he cast a look back at Felix, who had gotten off the jeep and stood at an awkward distance from the group at the bomb. Sarge was keeping an eye on him, at least, so Tucker felt it was safe to turn back to Kimball, out of earshot of the others.

“What did you two talk about?” she asked, without preamble. “He spill anything? Any sign of plans?”

“Not much. He still hates Locus. Or at least is afraid of him,” Tucker said, shrugging. “He said we were still friends in his world.”

“His world?” Kimball repeated, voice dangerously even.

Tucker scowled. “Hey, it's getting confusing to hop between what he's telling us and what we're telling him, okay? I'm just simplifying it.”

“Don't let him get in your head,” she said, irritable. “Even if he genuinely doesn't remember as a result of hitting his head, there is no way he's from a different universe. Don't get wrapped up in some fantasy.”

“Kimball--”

Across the clearing, the others started to speak, loudly.

“Church?” Tucker froze at Carolina’s voice. She was leaning around Wash to peer at the AI and the bomb. “What's wrong?”

Epsilon was focused on the bomb, ignoring all the other humans. “Don't distract me.”

“What's wrong, can't do it?” Tucker called, teasing. He was not expecting Epsilon to flicker in irritation.

“I can’t--there's something with this coding,” the AI said, before Carolina could speak again. “It’s not as simple as unlocking a freaking door, okay? The encryption is strange.”

“How strange?” Kimball asked as they all moved closer.

Epsilon whirled around before turning and refocusing on the bomb. “I don’t-- _ look _ , can you trust me that this isn't as simple as it sounds? I’m only able to get the first four digits before the pathways shut down. It’s ridiculously fast. Way faster than a launch program should be on an isolated bomb.”

“I thought AI could do everything,” Sarge said.

“If we could, don't you think we would have taken over the galaxy by now or something?  _ Jesus _ .” Epsilon was still as surly as always. Tucker was glad, even with his mood swings lately, that was the same. “Oh, man, that's not good."

“What’s not good?” Wash asked.

Epsilon flickered, distracted. “No wonder they’re fast. These are connected to the  _ Staff of Charon _ ’s main hub. While I could, in theory, hack into the network remotely, there’s some crazy firewalls. He was not messing around with protecting these things in case one of us found it earlier.”

“So hack them,” Locus said, blunt. Felix shot him a sharp look, as did Kimball.

“If I do that, the security system on the ship’s network will most likely be activated,” Epsilon snarled. “He’ll know.”

Hargrove would know the moment they screwed around then. Tucker felt a cold feeling sweep through him. He had been hoping it would be quick--just like Epsilon swoop in, shut it all down, and then they could figure out how to hold their defenses for just a little longer.

Everyone had gone quiet at that. Tucker wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what.

“So… how long will it take?” Carolina asked. She shifted on both feet. “Can we beat the clock and have you unlock them and then relock them before Hargrove can react?”

Tucker sent her a wild look. She wasn’t--she wanted to fucking gamble their chances? With a fucking nuke?!

“We don't know if he’s set something automatic up,” Epsilon said, shaking his tiny translucent head. “If I hack in, it could have a trigger set up. I might not be fast enough. This security is intense. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few traps planted.”

Hargrove knew that Carolina had Epsilon, Tucker realized. It was entirely possible that the old man had expected an AI's interference. 

Still.

“How would you not be fast enough--?" he started to ask.

“I'm not exactly a spring chicken, okay?” Epsilon snapped, zapping over in the air over nearer to Tucker. “I’ve been overclocked for the last month.”

“What does that--?”

“I'm  _ tired _ , okay?” Epsilon said, in a tone Tucker almost never heard from Church. A genuinely worn out tone. The AI’s shoulders drooped just slightly. “And I'd rather not slip up where it really matters. Like with nuclear warheads. Not something I want to take a gamble on with my speed alone.”

Tucker’s heart clenched. That made sense, as much as he wanted to argue that all they had was a risky gamble anyway. If they did nothing to remove the nukes, they were just more threats to hang over their heads, as likely to kill them as all those hordes of mercs or heavy gunfire from the  _ Staff of Charon _ .

“Then what do we do?” Wash asked. He sounded a lot calmer than Tucker felt. As usual.

“Is there anyway we can just… move them?” Felix asked. Kimball looked over at him, but he didn’t seem to react. “Just to get them away from the populated areas?”

“We could, but the fallout would still be a danger if he set them off,” Epsilon said. “I need to get to the ship.”

Kimball shook her head slowly. “If any of us take off on a shuttle, they’ll shoot us down in seconds.”

“I know.” Epsilon crossed his little arms. “Let me think. There has to be a way we can sneak up there without--”

There was a single crack, faint and almost unnoticeable to Tucker. The only reason it connected in his mind as something to notice was when Locus whirled around.

“Get down!” the merc roared.

Tucker turned, startled, but he saw the flash of gunmetal dart across the air. He dove behind the rocks at the same time as Kimball did, ending up with them tangled as the grenade's blast rocketed across the clearing.

Tucker felt someone else slam into his back, sending him even further into the dirt. Gunfire broke out like fireworks and he could feel the ground and the boulders shake as the bullets tore the stone up on the other side.

He had no idea how many there were, but he heard Kimball shout about mercenaries. Tucker cursed and rolled over, bracing himself against the rocks that all of his companions--including Locus--had used for shelter.

“I hate grenades!” Felix said, somehow audible over the gunfire. He had sunk down against the rock, hands covering his head the best way he could manage, wincing as chips of rock fell down on top of them.

“How did they find us?” Wash asked, before turning physically around to face Locus.

Locus, for his part, hadn’t fled or taken up arms against them, so Tucker wanted to believe that the bastard had been just as surprised as them. He was ducking low with a pistol pointed downwards.

“I don't know,” the merc said, irritation coloring his voice. His visor turned toward Kimball, who had her gun on him, but thankfully she hadn’t fired yet. “Where’s the squad you sent to find the first bomb?”

Carolina and Wash exchanged a look. “They should have been back by now,” Wash said. Kimball immediately sent out a message to base camp, but the transmission bounced back. They were being blocked, Tucker realized.

“If he found out that you know about the bombs, then the plan has already failed,” Locus said, all too loud in Tucker’s ears.

“Goddamnit,” Kimball said, breathing heavily.

Carolina had her gun out. “We need to get out of here, now." 

“The closest bomb to the valley could still hit the camp hard,” Wash said. “The radiation alone would be deadly.”

_ Fuck _ , Tucker thought.

“I thought you said he wouldn't risk his stupid alien weapons,” Felix said, wide eyed, angry, like this was entirely their fault.

“You obviously don’t realize how fucking pissed off he is at us!” Tucker exclaimed.

Sarge ducked lower at another volley of gunfire. The rock was being chipped away to nothing. “What do we do? We’re outta time, ladies!”

No one moved or spoke for a second. Locus’ visor went upwards, like he was looking skyward. Toward Hargrove.

“If we cannot deactivate the bombs on the ground, we must do it from up there,” he said.

Tucker let out a sharp laugh. “Dude, how? Ask him nicely?”

“Do you have any spare teleportation grenades?” Locus asked, looking at the Freelancers.

“And  _ what _ ? You're gonna shoot one up a few thousand feet and hope it lands you there?” Wash asked, letting out his own depreciating laugh. 

“Why can’t we just grab a ship?” Felix asked.

“They’ll shoot us down,” Epsilon said loudly. He seemed to turn to Locus. “Damn it. And now they've seen  _ you _ here.”

Kimball let out a gasp. “Move!”

Tucker saw another flash and he was on his feet in seconds when he realized the bastards had thrown another grenade. Carolina, faster than all of them, threw him and Felix out, down a low hill, into the brush. The grenade went off and it was only a mildly relief when he heard Sarge over most of the din.

“Come and get me, you bastards!” the red leader was shouting, laughing. 

“Sarge,  _ for God’s _ \--get over here!” Wash shouted, even louder. 

Tucker scrambled to get his gun out and get back on his feet, but bullets ripped into the trees overhead. He saw more rocks and dove for them. Just as he cleared it, he saw Kimball right behind him.

Grabbing hold of her arms to yank her behind cover, Tucker looked around wildly. “Where did Felix go--oh, shit!”

He saw a dark armored merc kick the only unarmored man around further down the hill. Felix didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t even have his arms free. Tucker gasped and started to edge closer, but stopped short when the merc slammed his foot down onto Felix’s chest, pinning him, and leveled the gun into Felix’s face.

“They're bringing in their soldiers without armor now,” the one over Felix said, grinding his foot down into Felix’s chest. Felix screamed; Tucker remembered his ribs were injured.

The other merc had his gun raised, scouring the smoky jungle for the rest of them. “Forget about him, where are the Freelancers--?”

“Wait, why is he cuffed--?” the other began.

Neither got to finish. A shot rang out and the merc pointing the gun howled as his knees crumpled. Carolina emerged soundlessly from behind, kicking him in the elbow, causing him to drop the gun and fall completely to the side. By the time the other had his gun raised in the right spot, Wash had dropped him with a single shot. Carolina finished the other, the mercenary half-crawling toward his weapon.

There were three more distinct shots, followed by Sarge’s whoop of victory, and then nothing.

Silence reigned. 

Tucker didn’t waste time stumbling out toward Felix, but the man was moving and breathing loudly, so he was okay. There was blood coming from Felix’s nose, but no bullet holes. Tucker decided it could have been worse.

The others emerged at the same time, creating a nervous energy around the clearing like they were all still ready to bolt. Running didn’t seem like it would help, however.

“All hostiles neutralized.” Locus whirled on Kimball. “You need to alert your people. You need to evacuate to underground,  _ now _ .”

Sarge, unruffled by the violence as ever, stumbled over to them. “We just moved everyone out from underground!”

Kimball was less lighthearted about it. "There is no where left to hide, damn it!" She cursed, turning in her spot, as if looking for a better answer somewhere else around them. “I have moved my people around all over our planet and this is it! This is our last chance.  _ Damn it!” _

“Look, if they haven't set off the bombs yet, they probably won't,” Wash said, only slightly out of breath. “Church, is there anyway to monitor them?”

“Yeah, not that will do much good if we have fifteen seconds left to live,” Epsilon said, flickering again. “I’m not hearing much on the merc channels I have access to right now.”

“I have access. I’ll send you the rest of the channels,” Locus said. “They are reporting our presence here, but there is only mention of discovering several Chorus soldiers, the Freelancers and myself near one.”

Tucker shivered. “He hasn't set them off, so he must not want to yet.”

“Maybe he thinks we can’t activate them without Felix,” Wash said. 

Tucker froze.

Felix.

_ Wait a second _ , Tucker thought, a sharp and astounding realization hitting him square in the head.

As if summoned by his name, Felix finally rolled to his knees, coughing and sputtering curses.

“Shit!” He barely managed to get to his feet, hands still bound. “This is why I need a goddamn weapon! I could have died!”

“Oh, stop complaining,” Epsilon snapped.

Just as Felix started to complain, louder, Tucker moved closer to the merc. “They didn’t recognize you,” he said.

Part of him was stunned. The other part was oddly electrified at the thought.

Felix took an angry swipe at his own face, wiping blood off from his nose. “I thought you said I was their boss.”

Tucker opened his mouth, but Locus beat him to it, saying, “They’ve never seen you without your helmet.” 

Flinching back, Felix didn’t move further away surprisingly when Locus stepped up. The armored merc stared Felix down. 

“You never took it off in public, even at the bases or on the ship,” Locus said. “You didn’t want anyone to know your face. Only myself and Control would have known it.”

The way he said it was almost in his usual way--monotonous, unattached. But Tucker heard the same inkling in his voice that Tucker felt. 

Control didn’t know what Felix looked like. Or more likely, the ordinary mercenaries who worked for him didn’t know Felix’s face. They had no idea that Felix had been here.

“Wait. Wait, wait, that could work,” Epsilon said, catching on as well.

“What could work?” Kimball demanded.

“We can’t get close to a ship and now neither can Locus, just on the off chance these guys reported in about finding us all here,” Epsilon said, rattling it all off quickly. He sounded more upbeat than earlier, which Tucker took as a positive sign. The AI pointed at Felix. “But you--everyone thinks you're dead. Even the mercs were talking about it, though some believed you were captured instead, but the point remains that they have no idea you’re aiding the enemy now. We can run with that. Totally.”

Felix seemed so much smaller outside his armor. He looked more worn out, too, though that could have been the blood and dirt. “Where is this headed?” he asked, weary and suspicious.

It was all very simple: the mercs, had they reported in, wouldn’t have mentioned Felix. While Locus was connected to the bombs now, Felix wasn’t. Tucker felt positively smart.

“If Felix comes back from the dead and begs asylum, he can at least get a ship,” Wash said, speaking slowly as he too followed the line of thinking. “Once he’s secured it, we can hop on and get to Hargrove's ship.”

“Hargrove will want him dead,” Locus said, immediately. “They would have heard your reports that you captured him alive. That alone will put him in suspicious lighting if he suddenly reemerged.”

“That’s a risk we'll have to take,” Carolina said, nodding at Epsilon.

Felix laughed--a hoarse, hysterical sound.

“I’m sorry, did you say a risk that  _ you  _ will have to take?” he asked, eyes darting from Carolina to Kimball and only briefly at Locus. “ _ I'm  _ the one who would be taking that risk!”

“You want to prove you're not on their side?” Kimball asked, lowly.

Felix’s laugh became strangled with anger. “For Christ’s sake, you hired me for a war! Not a suicide mission! I'm not even getting paid now!”

“We can stage a breakout,” Carolina said. There was a humoring smile in her voice. “You play sniveling coward well enough. I'm sure you can manage this.”

Eyes bloodshot and twitching, Felix’s expression could have been lethal. “Drop. Dead.”

Wash sighed. “This is the only way, Felix. You’re the only one who has a chance of even getting close at this point.”

“Why can’t we just hijack a ship?” Felix asked, a little desperate. Tucker wanted to sympathize, but he knew they didn’t have a choice.

“You want to risk Hargrove’s trigger finger?” Epsilon asked.

Felix’s teeth clacked as his jaw snapped shut. He glared at the AI, fists trembling in front of him.

Tucker had no idea what he would have done if he was in Felix’s shoes, but he knew what they were all thinking. One of them had to do it. If they didn’t try, they were going to be nuclear toast. Felix, if he was still as paranoid about survival as Tucker had known him to be, surely couldn’t have ignored the fact they were all going to die anyway if he didn’t try.

The anger and fear made it clear that Felix knew that all too well.

“Goddamn it,” he said, turning and crouching, bracing his hands against his forehead. “God _ damn  _ it.”

Carolina clapped her hands together. “Looks like you'll be getting your armor back after all, Felix.”

“I hate all of you!”

Even though he felt kind of bad about bringing it up, Tucker had to smile. It was a plan. He had to trust that Wash and Carolina could pull it off, with their skills and Epsilon’s technological abilities. They could hijack a ship without Hargrove even realizing it was hijacked. All those weeks of being terrified of Hargrove infiltrating their camp was turned on its head: they were the ones who were going to infiltrate his ship.

The karma was sweet, even as Felix bitched his way back to the jeeps. Sarge at least helped him get there, since his ribs were hurting. Tucker almost went after to help too, but Locus stopped him. 

Getting grabbed by the mercenary was scary enough, but Tucker held his ground as Locus yanked him back to stop walking away. Locus let him go easily enough, but he loomed over Tucker and seemed inhumanly big.

“You are going to send him to his death,” Locus said. 

Tucker had no idea why the merc was targeting him with that line. It wasn’t like it was solely Tucker’s idea or command. It had to be done. Even Locus had helped the idea take shape.

Another feeling trickled down into Tucker’s gut as he realized how irritated Locus actually was. 

“Man, you sure didn’t give a fuck if he lived or died when you left him with us on the comm. tower,” Tucker said, unable not to sound bitter. “How’s this different?”

He had no idea if that affected Locus at all. The guy never showed his hand easily. Tucker had a feeling that even if the helmet was gone, Locus still wouldn’t be readable.

“This is different because he made his own choices last time,” Locus said, his voice managing to betray at least a little anger. “Here, he is a prisoner.”

Tucker inhaled sharply. “You believe him?”

“Don’t you?”

There was no way he was going to let this be flipped on him. Tucker stepped closer, forcing himself to ignore the threat of being closer to the giant at all. “Why do you trust that he doesn’t remember? I’ve been trying to figure it out for over a week, man.”

“He’s not himself,” Locus said, sharply. “I  _ know _ Felix. That’s--”

He stopped. For the first time, Tucker thought he saw a nervousness come out in Locus’s body language, with a rise of his shoulders and the slightest movement back, away from the other soldier.

“That is not the man I was partners with,” he finally finished, biting the words out.

“Then who is he?” Tucker asked, daring to lean closer.

“How should I know?” Locus demanded. 

Locus shoved past him, stomping back toward the Warthogs, anger radiating off him of him a way Tucker hadn’t expected the robotic mercenary could muster. 

Tucker made sure to go in the other jeep on the way back to camp, even if that meant sitting next to a whiny, bitching Felix, and dealing with a kind of guilt he just wasn’t used to facing.

  
  


**End _Chapter 8._**

  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felix literally acts and then Locus decides to act. Oh, boy!
> 
> A/Ns:  
> \- “brown haired” Felix is a nod to the semi-canon image we got of Felix in season 14. While that Felix isn’t necessarily canon either, I’ve decided to ignore my own headcanon for this fic, just for simplicity’s sake. He’s still short though.  
> -I know that many of you have been wanting more interaction between Felix and Locus. More is coming, I promise! I’m just that slow-burn kinda author you dread picking up. :c


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They enact their plan to get to Hargrove. Locus, however, has an additional plan in the works.
> 
> Thank you all so much for the kudos and comments! I'm so glad you're enjoying the story!
> 
> The bad news here is that I wasn't able to do more of a buffer than this, so while I expect to have the next chapter in two weeks as usual, it might be delayed a bit. ;-; Sorry!
> 
> \---  
> disclaimer: red vs blue © Rooster Teeth  
> warnings: major character death, foul language, alternative universe (AU), fix-it fic, slow burn Lolix, AI drama, weapons of mass destruction  
> \---

  

**Thirty Minutes North of Crash Site Bravo**

Felix had never felt less comfortable in his own custom-made, extremely expensive armor.

Trudging through Chorus’ jungles was familiar enough. He was completely covered in his armor at long last, which did wonders for supporting his injured side and giving him the sense of protection he had been craving. Years in a war zone made it hard to just shrug off that kind of feeling after it’s been taken.

His mission wasn’t to scout or defend, like it normally was. There were no Feds to fight. Being in armor did nothing to change the strangeness in front of him. Or its dangers.

“This isn't going to work," he said, ducking under a branch instead of breaking it. He didn’t want to cause even more noise with his approach. "I disappear and then reappear, just as the going is getting rough for you? No one is that stupid."

“ _The going was already rough for us, Felix. Buck up_ ," Washington said, somewhere else in the jungle, decidedly not in the line of fire like Felix was.

"I don't see you walking into certain death, asshole,” Felix snapped. "What do I even get out of this?"

" _You get to avoid dying from radiation poisoning_."

Oh. Right. That.

"Who's backing me right now?" Felix asked. "Please don't tell me Tucker. He can't aim for shit."

" _I heard that, asshole!_ " Tucker shouted, also somewhere out of sight. " _I can aim just fine!_ "

"You can't even avoid missing the seat--"

Washington interrupted, impatient. " _Carolina and Locus are keeping a closer eye out. The rest of us will be ready to move in_."

"You’ve completely failed to reassure me of anything,” Felix said.

"Focus _, Felix. We only have one shot at doing this. You know as soon as Hargrove realizes what we've done, he'll target the canyon_."

Felix held back an angry growl. "I don't understand why Kimball won't evacuate."

" _There's no where left to evacuat_ e."

"Bullshit. Tons of cave systems around here."

" _Yeah, well, you try moving a few thousand people in a few hours_ ," Washington said. " _This is it, Felix_."

Rolling his shoulders, Felix scoffed. "Yeah, yeah, no fucking pressure." He could see the dark shape of the transport just a hundred meters across the flat jungle floor, a looming monolith in the green landscape. "I so did not sign up for this."

Wash had told him that the Felix they knew oozed confidence and self-importance. That was easy enough to do, since Felix felt he was pretty damn confident himself. Tucker added that their Felix had been a royal asshole to everyone, including his own men. That was also workable.

As he stepped right past the last obscuring branch, the squad of mercenaries--all standard issue armor, nothing to either scoff at or think much of--all turned to look at him. Poor reaction time, Felix thought. Poorly trained.

"Hey!" The nearest guy had his gun raised-- _finally_ , Felix mused--and pointed it at Felix, who stopped. "Stop right--"

The guy behind the aiming merc immediately grabbed the gun and shoved it down.

"Stop," he said. His visor was pointed Felix's way. "Holy shit."

Despite the anxiety gnawing at him, Felix knew that they recognized him then. The kind of awed silence that followed made him smile grimly.

Show time.

"What are you gawking at?" Felix asked. He moved forward, ignoring how the other two reached for their guns, but also stilled before actually bringing them up too high. "Put that gun down before I ram it down your throat."

" _Wow, you sound like your old self_ ," Tucker said, over the radio.

"Don't distract me, idiot," Felix muttered back. He stepped closer, as if not caring at all about the guns pointed his way. "I said, put it down. I need a line to Control, right now."

The merc who had stopped the first from shooting seemed thoroughly rattled.

"Sir, where have you been?" he asked. "We thought you were dead."

"Do I look dead?" Felix asked, keeping the bite in his voice. He limped toward the shuttle, the movements not entirely faked. "I've been sitting in a rebel jail cell for the last week and a half. I only got out because of whatever chaos Control's been throwing at them--and me, I might add."

The merc hesitated. "Sir, we should--"

"You should we getting me access to the goddamn _Staff of Charon_ ," Felix said, stopping and turning to look at the merc over his shoulder. "My coms are busted. Hurry up!"

If that wasn't enough, he didn't know what else to add. He was good at acting, but usually he had time to scope out the people he was manipulating. All he had was the information that Washington or the others told him, and that was only in a matter of hours.

Still. Felix was good. He stood impatiently, letting his irritation be clear in his body language. Most of the mercs seemed thoroughly stunned to see him still and increasingly nervous. It was a good sign.

The tallest of the mercs, the one who spoke to him, seemed to be increasingly calm, however, prompting Felix to stare at him. The merc seemed unnerved, but a lot braver than his companions.

"Sir, we received orders to bring you to Control if you were in fact still alive," the merc said.

He sounded well-trained at least. Probably one of the few pros left in Hargrove's stock of body fodder, Felix realized. He really hoped the other him hadn't known these people personally; he sure as hell didn't know their names.

His pause made the mercs nervous. Felix hoped it was because they thought their former boss was about to explode on them.

"Oh, really?" he asked, buying time. "And who gave those orders?"

He really hoped whoever had his back was paying attention now.

"Control, sir," the merc said, adjusting his grip on his weapon.

Felix fought the urge to just shoot them all at that moment. "Then maybe you should let me talk to him, hmm?"

The merc just stared down at him--he was just a few inches taller, but Max could see the tension in his shoulders. Suspicious, yes. Nervous, definitely. Felix had to smirk at that. It was nice to be feared again in a deliberate way of his own design. Fear could sometimes mean respect and it wholly depended on the situation to determine which response he wanted from people. Now, fear was a safe response.

After what felt like a ridiculously long time, the merc seemed to accept the situation.

“Get the comms. up,” the merc said, snapping the order to one of the others, who scrambled ahead of them into the shuttle. As he climbed the ramp inside, he continued speaking to Felix. “We’ve been trying to minimize our presence on the planet when not targeting the camp, hence being out of range for most basic communications right now."

“Why’s that?” Felix asked, eyeing the second gun the merc had on his back. There was a knife on his hip, too. The other three also had the same weapon set. Not impossible.

“Locus, sir,” one of the other mercs said. “He’s gone AWOL.”

Felix stopped, for just a fraction of a second. He grit his teeth.

“Ah. Well, maybe if we’re lucky, he’ll get caught in some crossfire soon,” he muttered.

“ _Cold, dude_ ,” Tucker said. Carolina snorted.

“I-it’s been really confusing, sir. No one knows what’s happening,” the nervous merc continued. “They say the UNSC is on its way. I don’t want to go back to jail.”

“Yeah, well.” Felix rolled his shoulders as they entered the shuttle's shadowed interior. “Neither do I.”

The merc who ran ahead had activated something at the helm, which the professional took over without another word. Felix slowed to a stop, watching the man's hands move on the communications panel. If the man warned Hargrove or anyone else that Felix was back, they could get an order to kill him right then and there. Carolina had been the one to cheerfully tell him that. While confident, Felix could not shake the tendril of anxiety latching itself to his spine.

“Comms. are up,” the merc said, sliding his palm down the panel and then stepping back.

“Great.” Felix backed up against the wall, hands going for the knives at his side. “Your turn, Smurf.”

The merc at the helm turned. “Huh?”

"Don't fucking call me that," Epsilon snapped, emerging in a burst of blue.

The appearance of the AI, hovering in the air like a tiny phantom, seemed to take all the mercs by surprise. Only the professional one seemed to have the sense to reach for his gun, but then, he stopped. Probably trying to figure out the angle of the situation.

Felix shrugged and then grabbed his knife.

Close quarters meant close fighting. By the time the guy went for his back, Felix had his knife shoved through the one weak spot under the merc's chin, straight into his neck. He hadn't been allowed a gun, with Washington feeding him some bullshit answer about "escaped prisoners" not having readily available guns. Total bullshit, Felix thought, as he slammed the sputtering mercenary into the wall, driving the point literally home.

The one behind Felix had yelled and clearly went for his own weapon. Hauling the merc on his knife around, Felix used the body to shield the short burst of gunfire. He thought about throwing the corpse at him, but the outside erupted into enough chaos to distract them both. Louder gunfire and the shouts of the remaining two mercs gave Felix enough time to toss the body aside and throw his newly freed knife, which landed neatly into the distracted merc's neck. He fell hard, his gun clattering to the shuttle floor.

Felix sighed loudly. The anxiety from earlier had been replaced by the familiar warmth of adrenaline. Not that much, of course, but it made him feel light.

“I have so missed beating the shit out of people,” he said, with a contented sigh. He missed having power, more specifically, but that was a bit much to admit out loud. Power meant he was in control and being in control meant safety.

“That was stabbing. Not beating,” Epsilon deadpanned.

“Eh, whatever.” Felix stretched. “Get moving.”

“You don’t need to remind me,” the AI snapped. He flashed and then disappeared, right into the shuttle's computer.

Outside, he heard their allies moving in. Felix retrieved the knife he had thrown out of the merc's neck and walked out toward the shuttle ramp. He wiped the blood off on the hanging netting on the side and waited.

The ex-Freelancers were already in the clearing, having taken out the remaining two mercs thanks to their surprise appearance. He heard the Warthog roving closer and the flash of teal as Tucker hopped off and continued on foot. He didn't see Locus, but given his invisibility enhancements, there was no way to tell. Felix's smirk faded at the thought of being watched the whole time. He hadn't been joking; the idea of being backed up by that man on the field was no comfort at all.

Carolina beelined to the shuttle, reattaching her weapon to her back and sauntering forward without any sign of apprehension. Felix had to give her credit for the confidence.

“All clear,” she announced.

“Great!” Felix said, clapping his hands together with false cheer. “I can keep my armor, right?”

Carolina said nothing as she walked past him, but Washington at least offered a: “We’ll see.”

Scowling, Felix put his knife back into place. Assholes.

**0000**

Whistling while kicking dead bodies down a shuttle’s ramp was probably a sign of some kind of insanity, but since Gray wasn’t there to bore them to death about it (or join in), Tucker just assumed Carolina and Felix shared some kind of normalcy that only made sense to them. Whatever, he decided.

Tucker was more concerned about what came next. He stood by awkwardly as Wash and Carolina got to work prepping the shuttle for a quick take-off. It would be risky to approach without the other mercs, but with Felix distracting the _Staff of Charon_ with his bullshit, they could probably get up there in one piece, unnoticed. They'd be met with more firepower than normal, considering that Hargrove probably would order Felix be killed on sight. Tucker was glad they had the advantage of surprise, but the idea of walking into a firing squad was a little disconcerting.

Still, they had Wash, Carolina, Felix and Locus, along with himself, Sarge and two more Fed soldiers, Privates Moore and Sae, who were some of their rare good shooters. Sarge had wanted his team--the Reds and Blues, more specifically--to come along, but Kimball needed their help back at the camp. Once they made contact up on the _Staff of Charon_ , it was inevitable that Hargrove would strike back at Bravo. They needed to be ready, Kimball said. Tucker had to agree.

Now they were in an awful in-between stage of waiting. Tucker tried to stay out of the way, but inevitably moved into the shuttle, where Epsilon was still at the helm.

Getting Epsilon in first had been necessary, according to Carolina, since they had to make sure there weren’t any open channels or secret distress calls sent before they hijacked the ship. Also, Tucker was sure they just wanted the AI to keep a closer eye on Felix now that he was back in armor and had weapons. He thought that was fair enough, even though both Felix and Epsilon had bitched about it, even after the AI had been removed from Felix’s armor.

Tucker didn't get what the AI's problem was anymore. The whole Wash thing had been weird enough--Epsilon had been pretty clear he was fine with hanging with Carolina now, but the tension between Wash and the AI had been noticeable enough that even Tucker was concerned. It didn't make sense, because Carolina's reaction didn't seem like they were fighting and why would Epsilon want to hang out with Wash if they were fighting either? Epsilon had been cranky lately, too. Maybe more than usual.

AIs were stupidly dramatic anyway, Tucker thought, scoffing. They were all overworked. War was shitty like that.

He wasn't surprised when Felix came back inside too. Locus had been lurking by the jungle edges of the clearing and they would likely be moving out soon anyway.

"You know, I used to wish your Freelancer buddies had been around for the war, but wow, I am so glad they were dead," Felix said, slouching back and letting his legs stick out further out into the aisle. "They are such assholes."

"I mean, you're not wrong," Tucker said, sitting down opposite of him.

"Still better soldiers than you and the rainbow squad of course," Felix continued.

"Hey, we're not nearly as assholey."

"Right."

Carolina, who had moved over to the helm, patted the empty pilot's chair.

“Okay, Church, get us in on their communications and see where we’re at for an exit,” she said. “The sooner we get up there, the better.”

“Already on it,” the AI said, distracted.

“Should we disguise ourselves?” Tucker asked, as Carolina turned back and headed for the opening. “You know, in their armor?”

She shook her head. “There’s no point. We’ll be exposed the moment we get up there anyway.”

“Besides, who wants to be changing in mid-combat?” Wash called out, examining the mercs' bodies anyway for their weapons probably.

Tucker grinned. “We could fight naked. That’ll surprise them.”

“Or make them vomit, considering some of us,” Felix muttered.

“Don’t talk so badly about yourself,” Tucker shot back immediately.

Felix laughed sharply, hand going to his chest. “Wow, Tucker, I have to say, your comebacks are way more polished now.”

Tucker stuck his tongue out at the merc before realizing their helmets made the gesture pointless. Unlike Felix, he didn’t announced it. He grumbled and slunk down further into his seat. Carolina chuckled and walked off to help Wash.

Before he could turn back, movement coming up the ramp caught his eye. Any hope of it being someone other than the hulking menace was removed by the dark colored armor. Locus walked up with decidedly calm steps, sidestepping Carolina without a word exchanged between them. Tucker’s apprehension was rewarded with Locus stopped at the mouth of the shuttle, blocking out the light like the overdramatic creep he was.

“Uh," Tucker began, leaning forward, but it was too late.

“Felix,” Locus said, his grave voice evaporating any kind of levity in the air.

Body going tense, Felix turned his head.

“What?” he demanded.

“We have time. We should talk,” Locus said. He was so unnaturally still, his focus completely on Felix. “In private.”

Felix didn't move either, but there was something jagged about his posture. “Uh, no. Fuck you.”

“This may be our last opportunity,” Locus said. Tucker could hear just a faint echo of intensity in his voice. Impatient Locus was not something he wanted to witness.

“Well, thank fuck for that.”

When Locus just stood there, for just a handful more seconds but long enough to make the tension in the air double, Tucker leaned forward.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you, so just drop it,” he said. “We don’t have time for your old married couple routine anyway.”

Felix’s visor went back to facing Tucker. “Please don’t tell me we were actually married here. I may just put a gun in my mouth.”

“I’ve heard that’s a kink for some people.”

“ _Oh, my God_ , shut up.”

“Felix,” Locus said again, firmly. Irritation rang in his tone.

He said nothing else and that was probably worse, since Felix seemed like he wouldn’t wait for a follow-up. The orange-accented merc seemed to bristle more as the silence dragged. Maybe that was Locus’s tactic, Tucker thought, feeling increasingly uneasy.

It worked, anyway. Felix’s patience wore out. Maybe his curiousity did, too.

“What? Say it now,” he said, standing and facing the taller merc.

Locus stared at him.

“I need to give you something,” he said, at length.

Felix’s fists clenched at his sides. “Last time I heard that from you, you gave me a bullet and a concussion.”

There was nothing clear or identifiable about Locus’s reaction, if he had one. He just stood there, unmoving and silent, but his attention was clearly on Felix. The silence was so unbearable, Tucker almost wanted to ask Epsilon to start blaring some kind of radio.

Then, finally, Locus reacted behind him and unhooked something that fit in his hand. Tucker strained, but from that side, he only saw a flash of color. Felix hadn’t moved, but the subtle movement of his visor showed his attention had shifted to the object Locus was now holding out to him.

“What is that?” Felix asked, suspicion ringing in his voice.

Tucker had leaned completely off his seat, craning around until he could see the orange accented black cube comfortably gripped by Locus’s hand.

His heart leapt to his throat.

“Hey, wait,” he said, alarmed. He stood up straight. “Where’d you get--oh, hell!”

Felix was staring at the grenade, unmoving. “Is that a grenade?” he asked, wariness in his voice.

It might as well have been. Tucker tried to step forward, but he stopped dead when Locus seemed to stare him down, as if daring him to interfere.

“Locus, stop,” Tucker began, his voice rising. “Don’t fucking do it.”

“We’ll be back,” Locus said.

“What the fuck do you mean, _back_?” Felix asked, taking a step backwards, his aggressive pose lost to sane wariness. “What is that?”

“Don’t do it, Locus!” Tucker said, hands twitching to go for his sword.

“Tucker?” Wash called from outside.

Locus moved forward. Tucker lunged. “Don’t--!”

It didn’t matter if the others heard him or if he could have somehow wrangled the teleportation cube away from Locus, because both were totally useless to the fact that Locus was faster. He had snaked forward, with far more speed than his still form had promised, and grabbed Felix by the upper arm. Felix had snarled something, reaching for the hand, but Tucker saw the immediate downward motion of the grenade, and then they were gone in a familiar arc of color.

Tucker was left standing alone in the shuttle bay.

“Fuck!” he shouted.

Heroically late to the scene, Wash and Carolina were both at the top of the ramp a second later.

“What happened?!” Carolina demanded. “Where are they?!”

“Locus just grabbed Felix!” Tucker said, hands going to his helmet. “They used a teleporter!”

“Are you kidding me?!” Wash shouted. He rounded on the teal-armored man. “Why did you stop them?!”

Tucker pushed Wash back, infuriated at his inaction but also because his luck fucking sucked. “What was I gonna do, stab them? We need them alive, don’t we?”

Seemingly deciding to pay attention finally, Epsilon reappeared in the air by the helm.

“Correction: we just need fighters. Their lives are expendable now that we have the stupid codes. Or will have the codes. Whatever.” The AI sounded way too dismissive, at least compared to the livid humans who turned to look at him. “Look, let them kill each other. I have a feeling Locus is going to come back anyway. Dude’s been radiating that martyr complex I’ve seen in way too many humans in my lifetime.”

“But they could turn on us!” Tucker exclaimed.

“Maybe,” Epsilon said. “But Wash was right, Tucker. We’re at the end of the road anyway.” He sighed, heavily, like some kind of old man might. “Whatever comes next isn’t going to be something we can stop.”

If the two mercs went back to Hargrove--if this was some kind of weird plot on their parts to screw with Chorus one last time--they were doomed. Pure and simple, everything could go to hell in a matter of minutes if not seconds right now. Tucker felt like he was on the verge of panicking as he paced around the shuttle.

“Goddamn it,” he said, feeling cold and clammy.

Epsilon was right, too, and that was the worst part. Whatever came next? Anything could come next.

 _Anything_ was possible, Tucker thought, and anything was fucking terrifying.

At the very least, he knew for certain that Kimball was going to kill him.

**0000**

**The Jungles of Chorus**

They landed harshly, because Felix had been in the motion of pulling back and Locus let him go, feeling something almost intangible tear between the two of them, mirroring the ripping sound of Felix’s shout.

“ _Fuck_!”

Locus recovered faster, because he’s used to the disorientation of teleporting, but Felix--this Felix, who either didn’t remember his past or wasn’t Felix at all--was caught off guard. Felix stumbled, nearly collapsing, but still having the sense to swing aimlessly around him at any threat.

Not giving him the chance to recover, Locus kicked him in the side he knew was injured. That left Felix sputtering even with the armor and Locus brought his leg down to fully slam the other man into the ground. The temple was dead quiet and the clangs of conflict seemed sacrilegious to Locus’s senses now.

He knelt, ignoring Felix’s snarling curses, and yanked the knives off Felix’s armor, including the hidden one in the compartment on the back of Felix’s thigh armor. He double checked for the hidden pistol near the small of his back and found none--they had been thorough. It was surprising they had found it.

“Get off me!” Felix howled. He kicked back, jostling Locus aside, but still seemed unsettled by the teleportation. He tried to push to his knees. “Where the fuck--how the fuck--?!”

“Be quiet.” Locus slammed him back down and then gripped the underside of Felix’s helmet, letting the merc choke as he yanked it back. “Depending on what I find here today, I will send you back to them for them to deal with you. I will surrender as well. There is no point in trying to avoid what we deserve as punishment.”

Felix said something that was lost to the harsh sound of the helmet’s emergency unlocking protocol kicking in and letting Locus hurl the helmet aside. Familiar brown hair was pressed by sweat on the man’s face, but it wasn’t enough to hide the scar. Locus’s stomach churned for the brief moment he saw it, even as Felix lashed out to punch him in the face.

Locus rolled with the punch and then grabbed Felix by the neck. He hauled him to both of their feet, unwilling to let the moment pass. They were out of time in more ways than one.

“You are either lying or you genuinely don’t remember,” he said, breathing heavily, keeping the grip painful but not fatal around Felix’s neck, letting the other man writhe only as far as the fear of breaking his spine allowed. He brought up his pistol and jammed it into Felix’s back, letting the man feel it. “I don’t know if this will fix you, but you won’t be able to hide from it. Not from the machine.”

They were just yards away from it. The Jungle Temple had been abandoned by both parties once the real fight began. It was doomed to become a minor note in the war for Chorus. There was no need for mysticism or alien judgement after the conflict was done. Mankind was a predictable beast. Locus hadn’t expected to go back there again either.

But now, with it’s vibrant portal shimmering and pulsating in that obsolete loneliness, Locus felt like something was finally going to connect for him. Things would make sense as soon as Felix came back out. If there was something wrong with the other merc, the AI would know what it was. Locus was sure of it.

“What the fuck is that?” Felix demanded, voice tinged with hysteria as he finally noticed the  portal. “ _What the fuck is that?!_ ”

“It won’t hurt you.” Locus hauled him around, the weight of Felix’s armor nothing to him at that point. He managed to keep the building tension in his chest out of his voice as he shoved Felix toward the portal’s edge. “But it will be a different kind of violence.”

“Stop, I don’t understand what your fucking problem is,” Felix was saying, words tripping over each other in his fear now that he was facing the portal, still trying to squirm out of the other’s grip. He really didn’t remember what it was.

Locus’s hand tightened, leaving Felix gasp, arching back in pain. Locus shoved the pistol even further into the small of Felix’s back, causing the other to still.

“ _You_. You are my problem,” Locus said, the calm replaced by something darker, tasting like poison on his tongue. “You have always been my problem, back then, back when we were running from our demons.” He took a shuddering breath. “I trusted you with everything that I was made of and you kept me as a monster rather than a man.”

“That wasn’t me,” Felix said, desperate. “I swear, it wasn’t me.”

He sounded sincere.

Felix always sounded so sincere, Locus thought, the fact searing his insides.

“Maybe it wasn’t,” he said. “But I still need to know who you are. _You_ need to know who you are.”

 _Who you were_ , Locus thought.

“W-wait--!” Felix began.

He didn’t give him a chance to talk his way out of it. Not this.

Locus let Felix go and then kicked him straight into the portal’s unforgiving glare.

 

 **End** **_Chapter 9_ ** **.**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, Felix meets a stranger in red.
> 
> That’s just like Locus, dumping the actual mission on the heroes while he deals with his not-partner’s drama. Also, Karma, Felix. Sort of. For the other you.


End file.
